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Robert Davidson: When did your interest in music begin?

Elena Kats-Chernin: I would say I go back to when I was six. That's when I came in touch with piano, maybe even earlier but I can't remember. The interest was always there because my mother learned music and my father played violin. My mother used to drag me along all the time to operas and to concerts, especially piano concerts.

This is when you were living in Yaroslavl?

Yes. It's a Russian university town.

When did you start composing?

When I was eight, nine. I improvised a lot already before that.

Did you start only writing for the piano?

The piano was my orchestra. I once wrote for a Pioneer Choir in the school using a text I found in a magazine. That led to nowhere.

Can you trace any influences from that time which have gone into the formation of your present voice?

My favourite composer at that time was Rachmaninov. It's embarrassing to say so, but I was really taken by the 2nd Piano Concerto, and his Vocalise. All of his concertos I know by heart. This I left behind when I was studying avant-garde music for years and years, and recently I've started coming back to these old roots - you know, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, all this Russian music history. Suddenly it's coming up again. I don't listen very much; it's just in my memory, stuck in there, and I can feel it's coming up in my pieces.

Stravinsky, Shostakovich?

Yes, the first conductor of Clocks said "Hm, that sounds like Shostakovich", and someone else... people say it's a bit like Stravinsky - but I don't particularly look back to these composers. I admire them, yes, and Shostakovich especially, and Prokofiev because they did what I am doing - film music.

When I listen to your music I feel that Stravinsky is looming in the background, somewhere.

Subconsciously it's there. Basically it's like cooking - you put all the Russian composers into one pot, and they're all in there in my music somewhere. I can't pick up who exactly - it could be Mussorgsky too, it could be Maszcovski, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov. It's very subconscious; I prefer it to be subconscious. I don't want to know until once the piece is finished; then I can say "mm, that influence came in," but I try not to think about these things analytically when I'm writing. I like it to be streaming through the body through the mind into the paper (laughs).

One of my favourite composers is Ravel. I absolutely admire his instrumentation. I analysed the piano piece Jeux d'Eau, and because I like to concern myself with just two or three chords today, that's also one of those pieces, which has the minor seventh and minor chord and also lots and lots of sharps - I like that you see (laughs). I love black notes.

This doesn't sound like a student of Richard Toop and Helmut Lachenmann, who would both seem to place themselves within the musical framework of modernism. You are wrting pieces concerned with two or three chords, or in the case of Retonica, one chord. You are writing pieces such as Pro-Motion for Bang on a Can which show characteristics of postminimal music. Other works have titles such as Charleston Noir, Gypsy Ramble, Russian Rag. You seem fond of defying categorisation. I wonder how your former teachers regard your recent music?

Oh, its interesting. It took a lot of years of turmoil in my soul. When I studied with Richard Toop, it was never like he said "you must write like Ferneyhough" or "you must write like Lachenmann". He just showed me the models, and I listened to the pieces and I made my own judgement. He opened my eyes and my ears basically to the world of modern music (Stockhausen, Kagel, Berio, Boulez, and ... you know), because I came out of Russia not knowing anything past the second Viennese school really, and even that was hard to come by - it was considered antisocialist and decadent, and not suitable for the real Soviet musician. It was mystery and adventure for me. But that's behind me because I came here when I was seventeen, so that's a different story.

When Richard and I chose Lachenmann as someone to go to, what I like to think connected me was being extreme. My interpretation of extremity could be writing a piece which is all the way through loud, or all very soft, or bringing one aspect of the piece out to the radical edge. This I think I'm keeping, whereas in a lot of modernist music perhaps it's just more than one aspect taken to the extreme. I like to keep a little bit of minimalism, but not the minimalism as we know it of Philip Glass and Steve Reich. It's more just starting from a single idea and letting the rest follow.

Coming back to Lachenmann; if I hadn't studied with him and with Richard, I wouldn't be writing the sort of music I'm writing today. These are stages that I went through. Also I stopped writing concert music for five years, and wrote only for the theatre between '85 and '90. I was dealing a lot in the sound world, working in electronic studios, still doing modern things but in the theatre. Clocks was the piece which came out of the merging of the two styles, theatre and concert. At that time I left behind the fear - I had stopped writing because I was fearful, because I suddenly felt "I'm not going anywhere with that style" which I was writing before - very abstract, very modernistic. A few pieces from that period are still circulating. They are totally different, and I can't imagine how I wrote them. I can't write like that today - emotionally it doesn't come. I want my pieces to be personal and to be me, and to write as I used to just wouldn't be me any more.

I wrote a piece called In Tension in 1982 [for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, cello] while I was still a student with Lachenmann. My very first commission. At that time Lachenmann wrote a piece for piano, seven short pieces called Ein Kinderspiel,, in which one of the pieces used just rhythm with the two highest notes of the piano and pedal. I find this an amazing, stunning piece. You just hear those two notes together, never just one or the other, and in the end you just hear wood more than pitch.

In one part of In Tension I just get stuck into these two notes at the top of the piano, plus xylophone, so I'd go a bit further and do other things with it, but that was inspired by Lachenmann's piece. So I did learn something! I like how he took one instrument and transformed it into another instrument. In another piece he uses only the surfaces of the keys. Because it's so finely and subtly done, you can actually hear the differences between the black and white keys and the inside strings, and then with pedal. Again it's stunning, and very theatrical, and I love that. That's where I come in!

I used to be very scared of Lachenmann hearing my pieces today. I took the courage and sent him my Concertino [1994, a violin concerto with 11 instruments, composed for Peter Rundel and Ensemble Modern]. He wrote back and said that he listens to it a lot and that it's a lot of fun, and that he's happy that I've taken another direction. I think he respects that. He never wanted me to become like him; he hates it when his students write like him. It becomes pretending - it's not you. I've gone a very different way, and he likes that (I hope!).

I also had reservations about Richard Toop hearing my current works, but he too has accepted what I write at the moment, because for him the composer's personal presence in the piece is just as important as the technique. The most important thing is that I'm doing what I value, otherwise it's just not worth it.

Is individuality more important to you than innovation?

I think they're the same thing, or should be. If I go back and use maybe sometimes tonal chords, I use them differently. I don't think what I write could have been written a hundred years ago. It doesn't have to be modernistic innovation, which is not innovation any more anyway.

The theatre was important for you in finding your own voice. Were there other catalysts?

Social life, friends (laughs). Especially friends who perform my pieces. They've been a moral support. I would say without them I wouldn't be writing at all today, because I honestly stopped, and I was pushed by a pianist called Hermann Kretschmar to write a piano piece and wrote Tast-en, my first piece after all -this silence. He paid me some money and promised to play it in his solo concert in Hannover. I decided the springboard would be a single note, starting with a single note, but that's boring so I put it in octaves over the full piano range. This was a breakthrough for me, and I entered a new phase of writing after that.

So that was one of the first pieces where you really saw your own voice emerging strongly?

That's right. Well there were three pieces - Tast-en, Retonica for orchestra, and Clocks. These are all key pieces.

Let's see - Tast-en starts off on and is based around a single pitch, with Retonica it's a single chord and Clocks is based on a single metronomic pulse. All share this reductive approach, but break out of the reductions in various unpredictable ways.

Yes. Maybe that's why. . . you pick it up very well yourself, but I sometimes don't know why I say things; I just know that they were key pieces, and that after them I was much freer to do things which weren't quite considered progressive or "in" - after them I went my way. It is something that I like - stating one single idea and sticking to it. It could be one chord, one note - one chord progression, which I used in the harp piece Chamber of Horrors, or the piano piece Variations in a Serious Black Dress - a progression of chords goes through the whole way.

Like a chaconne?

Yes, that's something I like. Of course, every piece is different. Every piece is different, but these are the key elements really - rhythm, pitch, sometimes a certain sound (children interrupt playfully). You picked it up very well yourself.

 What about your orchestral piece Transfer written around the same time as Tast-en?

It starts off nicely, but I just don't like it. I wasn't ready. But it's the same idea - I just took a scale (D minor) and just dealt with it all the way through, breaking it into a few notes, each note having its own character, or its own motif around itself. But anything to do with the initial idea which is strong - let's take the Bang on a Can piece ProMotion, again only has three chords, based around the fifth A-E. The fifth is my favourite interval. That's another thing, using a single interval. In the Concertino it was a major seventh, and also in the Charleston Noir for piano, it was also a major seventh. There is always one single thing, stretched as I said, to extremes. Something which you would say you wouldn't do, or some kind of strange or corny chord progression, I just pick it up and see how far I can go with it. In the Schubert Blues it is also a chord progression, very filmic, you think you're in a very old-fashioned sentimental film. The idea with that piece was not the progression itself but to stretch the progression as many times as possible.

I didn't mention that my favourite composer is Gyorgy Kurtag - he stirred up a different direction in me. Suddenly I realised that there are other ways than just, you know, avant-garde...that kind of way. Also Scelsi.

What was it about these composers which pointed to a new direction for you?

Their concentration, their use of quotations, just dealing in a new manner. Although Kurtag is opening up all kinds of new sound worlds, he's also going back to scales and common chords. And Scelsi, well almost every piece of Scelsi starts on one note! (laughs) The concentration on the one element and letting the others come in later.

I also love Michael Gordon's piece Industry . It's for me the key piece in the new music, focussing so clearly on a single idea, and then gradually distorting it almost brutally.

Every time I'm working with a single element, at some point it breaks down and gets its own life, and I can't predict that. For the first two or three days I can hang on to that idea, but I get very bored very quickly (that's my nature) and start changing things and breaking my own rules. I can never tell when that's going to happen, or how it's going to happen.

It's never very neat then.

It's never neat. People sometimes say it's crude, or even shocking. Something very soft and slow, let's say, suddenly breaks down into something very harsh and fast and loud - that's the only way I can do things. I'm not really one for transitions - I prefer collage. I'd rather change colour completely than to do it gradually. I feel like a change and so I do it, like a whim really.

I'm thinking of the glissandi in ProMotion when everything suddenly goes rather mad.

Exactly. You don't expect this to happen. There's a little bit of me which wants to shock people, sometimes shocking them by being nice! I say "what is now expected of me" and try and do the opposite. It doesn't always happen unfortunately. I've been wanting to write a slow, soft Feldman-like work with not much happening (since people expect from me fast, aggressive music with a lot happening) but it seems very far away. The piece I've just finished, Champagne in a Teapot I wanted to compose like that, because it follows Clocks in the program where it will first be performed, so it would make a good contrast. But it didn't work out (laughs). It will happen.

Purple Prelude for seven instruments, composed in November, is more such a piece: slightly meditative.

It's like the music is directing you, rather than the other way around.

Yes. It's my emotions. I'm at a faster tempo right now.

Performers are an important part of your motivation to write. How do you relate as a composer to performers?

I like to shape pieces according to the performers' abilities and personalities. Because they're friends, I know what they're like, it's kind of personal - plus I want to please my friends. I don't want to please the crowd, but I want to please my friends (laughs). If they like it, then I think it's worth it, and they've always said "OK, that's good" and I've said "oh no, it's not good because it's not modern enough." They've replied "don't worry, just do it; do what you feel like" and they encouraged me. Players from Ensemble Modern in Germany, who played Clocks for the first time- they still keep doing it, harassing me wanting pieces, which is fantastic. Since I've come back to Australia it's been like that here as well, for example with the Sydney Alpha Ensemble players. That's a concrete motivation. I need that, and I need my family to say "you've got to write", and I need the deadlines (that's also concrete motivation), and the financial also plays a role. I do it for a living.

Most of your pieces are commissioned?

Most of them. Every two months or so I squeeze a piece in which is not commissioned. Or which is commissioned but not paid. But these pieces may lead to rewards later from performances or from following commissions. Plus it's a good investment in the playing abilities of people. I just like it, and think it's fun. But only if I want to; I don't write pieces if I have to absolutely squeeze them out of myself.

You do manage to squeeze out a large number of pieces. In 1996, you wrote upward of nine pieces.

Yeah, I think this year it's going to be more.

To achieve that, do you work to a routine?

Yes, I work non-stop. I don't have a timetable, I start in the morning and basically do it all the time. I just break to make food for my children or to drive them to school or whatever. I have to do that - that's my life. My life is only around writing and my children, and whatever I have to do in my household. I work in rushes, but take long breaks. I have to meet my deadlines, as this is my living.

Because you are so involved with performers, and with the physicality of sound, do you compose mainly at the piano?

Yes. Recently, only recently, because I suddenly found the piano a very inspiring instrument. Even if I simply sit at the piano and don't touch a note, I get ideas. I don't know what it is, it's illogical. Just sitting in that position... the piano's my friend. If I feel like it, I just start improvising whatever and just get away and can escape and come back - I can relax at the piano, or write at the piano. Plus even that position with the pen and ruler, everything at the piano, I prefer to the table. My table's usually busy with other things. I don't have enough space!

You mention improvisation. In listening to your work, I imagine you rely heavily on intuition in your creative process.

Yes, it's very intuitive. That's why I try to write every day, because I think today I'll write this way and tomorrow I'll absolutely think differently, and I have to catch that day, I have to catch that particular . . . because tomorrow it'll change, and I don't know if it'll be good. So I try to do it every day so I know I haven't missed out. It's very difficult to start again after you've stopped even for one day. You've got that break in the heartbeat, you've got to warm up and regenerate again. You lose time.

Every time I start a new piece it takes three or four days just to warm up, to write material that I will throw away. Since I last spoke to you, I have written a new piece for Cathy Millikan [oboist in Ensemble Modern] for english horn and thirteen instruments. Champagne in a Teapot. It took me four days of material to throw away, then it took me four days to write the piece in rough sketch and then I filled out all the spaces. That's what I do usually: I just get the whole piece all the way and then I fill out the rest. I just do the english horn and percussion, for example, and then fill it up. It's always two stages.

You seem not to take Stravinsky too literally in his assertion that "music is powerless to express anything other than itself"

Clocks was the only piece which has anything like a program, but the title came after the piece was done. I'm never really telling a story, I'm telling emotions. I wrote a piece called The Schubert Blues and it was about a state, a tragic state of mind, a feeling of loss or abandonment. So I based it on Death and the Maiden and it just happened intuitively, because I felt in that dark mood and I had to write the piece as a kind of therapy. It took me four days to write. Normally I'm not putting any intentional context into the piece.

Have you thought about how being in Australia has affected your music?

I've become incredibly free. There is an admirable tolerance here for all ranges of music. Everybody writes very different things, and nobody really cares here if you write. . . I mean in Germany, it's not possible I'm telling you. In Germany you couldn't . . . you become placed into a school.

Because there's less going on, you can get on with your work. In Germany the cities are close together and there's so much going on. Here, we hear what's going on, but there's not the rush. The first piece I wrote when I returned to Australia was the Concertino, and it's the first piece that's actually slow. I felt I slowed down in myself. I was frantic in Germany, sleeping out of a suitcase, doing three, four parallel productions between Vienna and Berlin, Frankfurt and Hannover, and it was crazy. I came here and was suddenly in one city, and I could calm down and visit friends, go to concerts, meet colleagues. I took the whole first year just to regenerate. I think the Concertino as a result is in a distinctly different style, because of my coming to Australia. Since then, it's been going towards what I'm doing now, it's that kind of transition.

How would you describe your music to someone unfamiliar with it?

Just listen.

© 2003 Robert Davidson