Dec 17th 2016

Impresario Leiser fears young piano talent will get left behind

by Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. 

Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.

Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.

You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:

“Portraitures and caricatures:  Conductors, Pianist, Composers”

 here.

Veteran impresario Jacques Leiser, summing up his 60 years of toil with some of the world’s greatest performers, is worried about today’s drift in the music business. He believes that too many young artists fail in their first few years because professional management no longer guides them through the labyrinth confronting them. “They can’t do it on their own, and sadly they get left behind,” he says.

Jacques Leiser

What has gone wrong with artists’ management – once the key to success -- in the past decade or two? “It has become quantity over quality,” Leiser says. “Quantity is where the money is.” The trend among today’s managers is toward a large stable of clients – often too many to nurture effectively. “They don’t furnish what the budding artist needs for growth and development. They don’t have the know-how. Their input is too limited.”

Leiser, one of the doyens of international artists’ managers and a former representative of EMI and Philips, worked with some of the greatest names in music, beginning with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and moving on to Sviatoslav Richter, Lazar Berman, Maria Callas, David Oistrakh, Dame Moura Lympany, Georges Cziffra, Paul Badura-Skoda, Bella Davidovich and Krystian Zimerman, among others.

At 85, he still has a sharp eye for talent. From his residence in Montreux, Switzerland, he continues to monitor young artists, and intervenes when he discovers someone with potential. “I have never really retired,” he says. It’s in my blood.”

Leiser has recently supported Joseph Moog, 28, a rising piano talent from Germany who is gaining a reputation in Europe. Moog fits into Leiser’s vision of a true musician. He has also picked out Tamas Erdi of Hungary and a young Swiss-based Russian, Igor Andreev.

“I have always sought out players who operate on a very high artistic level,” he says. “I’m more interested in musicians than performers.” Indeed, it is the current emphasis on performance that gets under his skin. “The trend is toward entertainment,” he adds, which can sometimes pull in audiences, but for the wrong reasons.

Leiser makes a distinction between the agent and the artist’s manager, although the two roles can overlap. The agent is focused on bookings. The manager becomes an intimate partner in the player’s enterprise. Leiser develops this idea in his new memoir, a rich compendium of anecdotes that he titled A Life Among Legends: An Impresario Looks Back, just published as an e-book.A good manager, he writes, “is an unsung hero … he becomes a friend, confidante, advisor, lawyer, medical advisor, and the architect of a career.” 

Leiser’s own credentials were lacking at the outset. He trained as a pianist but has always relied more on his “gut feeling” to identify talent that he wanted to work with. “I had to see qualities in the artist that could be developed. I had to feel something.” At first he relied on recordings to find that special feeling.

He started a record collection that has never waned. His Montreux residence is an extensive personal library, with hundreds of vinyl LPs and thousands of CDs sitting on custom-built shelving. “Records are everywhere,” he says. Early in his career, recordings “became the bridge which led me to management. My fascination with records remains a source of inspiration.”

Born in France and educated in the United States, he did not lack for chutzpah. His business-development technique was simply to contact the player or singer and offer his services. Inexperienced and only 25 years old, he approached Michelangeli at his home near Milan in 1963. They got on well and he made his first deal. “Michelangeli had no management at all,” Leiser recalled for me. “I was very enthusiastic about his playing but when he agreed to work with me, I was amazed myself.”

Lookingback over his career, Leiser today concludes that  “the music world that young musicians are entering has changed almost unrecognizably…” Among other things, he is dissatisfied with concert-goers. “We live in an era when audiences are often less musically knowledgeable than in the past. People today are rarely nurtured to classical music, and few young people are exposed to cultural education that would create audiences for classical musicians”. 

Worse, he writes in his memoir, artists have to take on numerous additional time-consuming burdens connected with their careers, often to the detriment of artistic achievements. “It is like having two full-time jobs,” he writes, “and this distracts from artistic accomplishments, which should, of course, be the artists' principal undertaking. The priorities have shifted from artistic goals and accomplishments and now focus on making a profit, which explains to some extent what I perceive to be the expansion of mediocrity and the increasing absence of quality.”

Jacques Leiser devoted his professional life to nurturing great artists, many of them pianists we take for granted today. Here are excerpts from his new book A Life Among Legends: An Impresario Looks Back:

Alfred Cortot

Alfred Cortot’s early recordings displayed tremendous, even spectacular, technique. He was a poet at the keyboard. His playing when he was in his sixties, however, would not work today; audiences would neither understand nor accept it. He would be criticized for wrong notes and not invited back.Franco Passigli, the Italian director of the Florence Friends of Music … knew Cortot well, and happened to meet him on the train in Geneva. Cortot was then in his eighties. Passigli reached for Cortot’s suitcase and almost dropped it because it was so heavy. He put it down and said, “Maestro, what do you have in your suitcase? I can hardly lift it.” Cortot turned to him and said, “ It contains my wrong notes.”


Vladimir Ashkenazy

I was in England when Ashkenazy arrived in London. The EMI staff asked me to speak to him about a contract to continue the work he had done previously on the EMI label when he was only nineteen. In those days contracts were frequently exclusive, and Ashkenazy agreed to consider recording for EMI, with one stipulation: “If I sign an exclusive contract, I want to receive five thousand dollars for signing. I have to start life all over again. I have children and I have to find a house.” When I reported this to EMI, the response was “What? That’s preposterous! Five thousand dollars! That’s unheard of.” Consequently nothing was done, and Ashkenazy went to Decca, who paid Ashkenazy the fee he asked. Subsequently he made so many recordings – over one hundred LPs – that both he and Decca were richly compensated, and EMI was left out in the cold.”

 

Sviatoslav Richter

When Richter was in form, everything flowed, crescendo after crescendo, it was overwhelming. He captivated his audiences in a way that no one else could, almost spellbinding them. The listeners’ attention was absolutely focused – nothing else existed except the sound of the music. He created an almost orchestral dimension that was beyond ordinary interpretation; he was incredibly inspired. Richter’s death was a severe personal blow to me, as well as a great loss to the world of music. I had known him for thirty-seven years. He was a Renaissance man – inspired by music, art, literature, and theater, by life itself.

 

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

The legendary Michelangeli asked me, “Do you think you could get me engagements?” to which I boldly replied, “Most certainly!” He didn’t even know or ask if I had ever managed anyone! And then he said, “Why don’t you look into it?” Dazed, I replied, “OK. Give me two months.” He then said “Va bene. Leave the Philips recording offer with me and I’ll think about it.” The meeting was over, and what an outcome! When Michelangeli … suddenly asked me if I could find him some concerts, I seized the opportunity, despite the undoubted challenges that it presented… Michelangeli’s decisions to cancel were unpredictable. (But he) managed to maintain himself through a capricious combination of cancellations and honored engagements.  I was dazed suddenly to find myself the world representative for one of the greatest living pianists. My enthusiasm and passion were such that I did not even consider this “work.” I was determined to overcome any obstacles in my way. As it turned out, there were many – including those created by the Maestro, who was rightly considered to be one of the world’s most difficult and demanding artists.

 

 

Another version of this article appears in International Piano magazine, London.

 


This article is brought to you by the author who owns the copyright to the text.

Should you want to support the author’s creative work you can use the PayPal “Donate” button below.

Your donation is a transaction between you and the author. The proceeds go directly to the author’s PayPal account in full less PayPal’s commission.

Facts & Arts neither receives information about you, nor of your donation, nor does Facts & Arts receive a commission.

Facts & Arts does not pay the author, nor takes paid by the author, for the posting of the author's material on Facts & Arts. Facts & Arts finances its operations by selling advertising space.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Music Reviews

Sep 11th 2022
EXTRACT: "When I try to understand my life as a critic in the dazzling world of piano music, I am at a loss. We have inherited so much over 300 years that I feel overwhelmed. There is no obvious focal point. What is at the heart of piano world? -- Personally I could not make it through the day without the stimulation of piano performance. My home resounds with music all my waking hours, constantly renewed from the thousand-odd CDs I have accumulated." ----- Picture: The author, Michael Johnson.
Jun 21st 2022
EXTRACT: "This novel is nothing short of a Tolstoian epic.   Author Lawson, a true polymath, is up to the task. He is an accomplished pianist and composer, retired archdeacon of the Church of England and author of some 14 books." ---- "Rounding out his career, Lawson is also a trained psychotherapist who has worked with several pianists, including child prodigies." ----- "I know of no other writer who can draw on such a varied and pertinent background and weave them into a single tale."
Dec 18th 2021
EXTRACT: "......, I read all the time in Russian, French and English. Right now I’m finishing the new book of my favorite Russian author Ludmila Ulitzkaya. Of course, I have read most of classics to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Pushkin, Akhmatova. I think it’s important to read Russian literature to understand Russian music, to understand the suffering and the spirituality of the characters of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Bulgakov in order to feel the depth of Rachmaninov’s music. I also read a lot in French and English. For me, it’s important to go from contemporary writers to the classics and back."
Dec 9th 2021
EXTRACT: Q: "Your new CD is a turning point. Why is it so important to you?" ----- "A: It is all Brahms. I really wanted to do it this way. It is very important to me because it is my first solo CD. I’ve been spending a lot of my time working on Brahms, especially the Brahms Paganini Variations and the Handel Variations. I almost grew up with them. "
Dec 3rd 2021
EXTRACT: "A musical theatre legend has died. Stephen Sondheim, the greatest composer-lyricist of his generation, passed away on November 26 at the age of 91. His dramatic genius combined a rare blend of elements, that of an astonishingly versatile and sophisticated composer, and an incredibly witty wordsmith. His extraordinary output includes a staggering 16 musicals as composer and lyricist, a further three as lyricist alone, as well as four musical revues featuring compilations of hit songs from his shows."
Nov 27th 2021
EXTRACT: "Most important  to him, he explained, is maintaining his individuality in interpretation. He feels it was a mistake in his past to pick and choose bits from different teachers and combine them into a finished performance. He has decided to create his own perspective, and 'go for it'."
Oct 28th 2021
EXTRACTS: "The 16th International Beethoven Piano Competition came to a rousing climax in Vienna on 21 October with first prizewinner Aris Alexander Blettenberg’s lyrical rendering of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No 1." ---- "The other two finalists, Austrian Philipp Scheucher and South Korean Dasol Kim, played Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Concertos respectively."
Sep 21st 2021
EXTRACT: "Top prize, worth 22,000 euros, went to Jae Hong Park, a flamboyant, emotive player with and a firm grasp of Rachmaninov, and second prize went to Do-Hyun Kim, who played Prokofiev’s second concerto with some considerable verve. Placing third was Lukas Sternath, a young Austrian who performed Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto with cool charm -- the opposite of Park’s style."
Jul 9th 2021
EXTRACT: " .....I have to give everything in these concerts,.... "
Jun 26th 2021
EXTRACT: What do you want to be known as? --- As “Stewart Goodyear, composer and pianist”.
Mar 15th 2021
EXTRACT: Denis Pascal, founder of the French Trio Pascal: ".....recording studios began working again. We recorded our Schubert trios at the end of September. And musicians everywhere are finding that the crisis allows time for a certain introspection and questioning into the way music is performed. Music will play a much more important role after the crisis."
Feb 12th 2021
EXTRACTS: "She began her piano training rather late in life – age 8." ..... "I want to contribute a sense of joy by discovering atypical works that might surprise an educated public. I have great experience and am inclined to share them with anyone who can appreciate them, or as André Gide wrote, anyone “who has an open mind”."
Jan 31st 2021
EXTRACTS: "A new recording of Franz Liszt’s piano compositions presents ten carefully balanced pieces in a double-CD album aptly titled Between Light and Darkness, launched by Piano Classics. The pianist, the veteran French virtuoso Vincent Larderet .... Larderet opens his CD with a moving exploration of Après une Lecture de Dante with a tortured lyricism unmatched by many of his contemporaries who play it. I was stunned the first time I heard his performance. In our interview below, he describes lyricism as “an essential facet of my musical conception. The piano must be able to sing like the human voice.” "
Jan 16th 2021
EXTRACT: "Jack Kohl is an American pianist and writer with three novels and two essay collections to his credit. His new collection, From the Windows of Diligence: Essays from a Standing Pianist, has drawn critical acclaim in the U.S. and Europe. In these reflections, he examines the power of ‘hack pianism’, the metaphor of running vs. the piano, and the ‘hidden gift’ of the Covid virus pandemic on solitary practicing. Robert Beattie spoke to Kohl about his music training and how he made the transition from pianist to author. (This edited interview was first published on www.Seenandheard-international.com and is reproduced with permission.)"
Dec 17th 2020
EXTRACT: "Freedom in Beethoven’s music takes many, frequently overlapping forms. There is heroic freedom in the Eroica (1803), freedom from political oppression in the Egmont Overture (1810), artistic freedom and innovation in the Ninth Symphony (1824). Today, Beethoven’s music remains deeply connected with a true humanism, which has the principles of freedom and self-determination at its heart. The composer’s music grew out of the age of European Enlightenment, which located human reason and the self at the centre of knowledge......"
Nov 27th 2020
EXTRACT: "One of the most durable tales in Western civilization – the legend of Faust – is brilliantly rendered in a piano adaptation, performed this week by the multi-talented Australian musician of German/Slovenian parentage, Ashley Hribar. A new recording of the music, now available digitally, will appear as a CD in the New Year. Hribar calls his recording, “Faust: A Mortal’s Tale”.  It is a personal musical reflection on the Faust story, loosely based on the 1926 silent film by Wilhelm Friedrich Murnau."
Aug 6th 2020
EXTRACT: "For 60 minutes, my mind was clear, the air was clean and the sound heavenly. It was my honor and privilege to have been there."
Jul 25th 2020
EXTRACT: "Scarlatti sonatas are enjoying a popular surge in recent years, tempting pianists –Europeans, Americans, Asians -- to try to master their broad range. Margherita has some advice: “Don’t be afraid to slow down, to speed up, to play the truly singable melodies with a quasi-Romantic feeling.” "
Jul 18th 2020
EXTRACT: "The dizzying output of John Cage the musician, the poet, the writer, the thinker, the artist, was so prolific that one of his sidelines – his interests in wild mushrooms -- has been almost overlooked. A new a two-volume set of books, beautifully designed by Capucine Labarthe, packaged in an elegant slipcover, seeks to fill this gap."