Natasha Paremski

Hi, Michael Shapiro.

A pleasure to be here. It's going to be fun.

Well, you know, if—if I consider the work as a whole, I— believe it or not, I might get in trouble for saying this. It's on a much smaller scale than we think. Um, meaning that Rachmaninoff takes these microscopic motifs,

and he expands a 48-minute, gargantuan concerto from a very, very, very small seed. Um, and it's just—that's what's so remarkable about it. In a sense, if you—if—it's—it's much less like we were just talking about Rachmaninoff being a melodist. It's perhaps not as overtly melodic as say, a Rach 2, which is really just about the melody, and th—and there are so many melodies. But here, like, for example, the second move—the Intermezzo, he takes this—it's a beautiful melody, but it's over quite quickly, and then he expands on it. It becomes a theme of variations, and it comes back in just these different forms and different colors and different textures. It's really an improvisation. This piece, I think, is above and beyond any of his other piano works, um, or anything written for the piano. It really is, genuinely, an improvisation on, you know, like one or two melodies in the first, you know, and things like that. And never mind the third movement, which is the, you know, the middle section, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, like that over and over again. But, you know, and some people actually dislike the concerto for—for that reason, you know, the more kind of—our more cerebrally driven colleagues. Um, and th—they think it's just not as rich and dense, but to me, I think that it's—it's—it's incredible to see how much Rachmaninoff was influenced by New York, and how he was influenced by actually American jazz. And yes, of course, there's Russian flavor all over it. But for me, it's kind of creating—my—my number one goal with that concerto is creating a genuine feeling of making it up as I go along.

Never say never.

Well, um, look, it started— I remember my very first piano lesson in Russia, and I remember the teacher forcing me to understand the weight of my hand at the age of three and a half years old. She was over like—they start—it's—it's from ground zero. It's like technique, technique, technique, because look, the—the Russian, um, theory of virtuosity is that if you can't play everything, you can't play really anything. So, you have to be able to have the complete toolbox, and even Neuhaus writes about how when Gilels came to study with him, he said, "You know, this guy, I've never seen anybody play such fast octaves, and I've never seen anybody blaze through so quickly through these most demonic of passages." And he was so obsessed with his technique. He was just like constantly working on his technique. And Neuhaus said, "And I encouraged that very much because the—the more connected, the—the greater your understanding of the instrument, the greater you can exp— Your goal really as a pianist is to become—to have the utmost connection to this most autonomous of in—instruments, the—the one instrument that could do pretty much any color. Um, and it can go from the tiniest pianissimo to the, you know, most explosive Prokofiev Second Piano Concerto first movement cadenza, um, madness. Um, but it all starts from age three and a half in Russia anyway, where like they teach you the—the freedom and, you know, correct, uh, wrist position, and I remember my first lesson, I—I asked my teacher, I said, "So, when can I do octaves?"

She says, "You can't reach pedals. Let's think about the octaves in a little while." But then, I remember lesson number two, I was playing something and she noticed some tension in my hand. She says, "And this is how you will only be able to play octaves for very short time." And so, you know, it's tension release and, um, you know, they kind of tried to impose extra, uh, you know, Czerny and all those études on me, but mean, that—that fell on deaf ears real quick because I was like, "No, I want to play real music. I didn't get into this for études." So, um, and then like my family immigrated, and th—they didn't immigrate for me. They immigrated for my father, who was, uh, a computer scientist, and because when the wall fell, the—the Soviet Union having collapsed, they literally—they call it katastroika because it just became a—a catastrophic country to live in.

Katastroika, yeah. And so my mom, yeah, my mom did not want to raise her children there. I have a younger brother. And so sh— there were a lot of people poaching people like my father to come to the United States, to Silicon Valley, and pursue, you know, computer science there in the boom of the '90s. And my mom said, "Yeah, we're going." But they literally had to start from zero. They—literally my dad came to this country with all the essentials, which for a Russian person are a pack of cigarettes, uh, a bottle of vodka, and a passport. So, um, that's how my dad start, at the age of 48, not speaking a word of English.

And obviously, it was just made very clear to me that the piano is not a priority. Piano lessons were free in Russia, and they were expensive here—are expensive here—and didn't have the money to transport what—the piano-shaped object that wouldn't have made it across the pond. Right. And, so, no piano, no music for about nine, ten months, maybe a year. Um, and then—and then I just begged my parents to play, because I—sh—my mom got tickets to see Evgeny Kissin, and I believe it was at Herbst Theatre at San Francisco Performances. It may have even been his debut on that series and his San Francisco debut.

And I just remember being completely blown away. I mean, of course I knew who he was, and I, uh, we had a cassette tape of his 12-year-old Chopin concertos, which I effectively destroyed by playing them non-stop in my mom's car. Uh, and to see him in the flesh was just insane. And I remember crying and just—it was so painful for me. I was—was really missing the instrument. And so I begged my parents. I said, "I really want to be like that. I want to be a performing artist. I want to be on that stage, and I want to one day play a solo recital on that same stage." Um, and, uh, yeah, let's see. I made my San Francisco debut about seven years later.

Oh, wait.

But then when I begged them—I begged them—they said, "But we don't have any money." And they th—they and—and—but I said, "But Mom, like, I can't live without this. I'm jealous of anybody who's in front of me like in a movie or like at my dad's company party playing the party. I'm jealous of all those people." I started playing on my knees. I mean, it was really sad, and my parents just broke themselves. And the first thing they did was they tried to look for a Russian piano teacher.

It was really important to them. It was not like just any teacher who people say like, "Oh, yeah, this person's—"

Huh?

Oh, yes, um, Silicon Valley, so, um, Mountain View.

And they found, yeah, sure, like believe it or not, there's quite a plethora. So, um, you know, I had a couple of teachers that kind of honored that technical approach. Then I had a German teacher, and he was—he was good because I mean, I would—I didn't listen to a word he was saying about the technique because I was like, "No, I use a different manual." Um,

Oh, yeah.

Um, well, I would say the moment it clicked was actually when I came to Mannes and I studied with Pavlina Dokovska, who is like the—she's a Neuhaus school granddaughter, if that makes sense. Like, her teacher studied with Neuhaus. So, it's like a direct lineage.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And, um, so she actually— let's—let's say she revealed what I had kind of found somewhat naturally, um, but she just revealed it, and it really all boils down to going to the bottom of the key and releasing. I mean, unfortunately, it's that simple. Um, and using the whole weight of your body, playing from your back muscles, um, never playing from your shoulders, never playing from your elbow, and definitely never playing from your wrist, and never isolating fingers like this. This is the worst thing you could possibly do. And I now call it when I teach, I call it the valves. Like all the valves. I said, "Don't close the valves." And the minute you close one valve, that's it. It restricts. And so, you play like this, you close one, two, three, four valves. You're like, [sighs] "Try to sing like this."

So, like one— yeah, one of the things that, um, Ms. Dokovska likes to do with students who really need like a lot of um, like, un—un-tightening,

is she puts them on a simple C major scale and you—and it's really this like kind of like—like all of this is loose, but your your—your very last joint is extraordinarily engaged. And it's really like thinking about pizzicato. You go to the bottom of the key and you just—it's like this motion. Mhm. So, people think staccato is this, mhm, but actually, that's garbage, because [Natasha laughs] that's not precise at all. Um, but in Russian staccato technique, it's this. It's going to the key and actually feeling the key release you back up. So, really, you're only doing a down motion, you never do an up motion. So, when people play like this, it's already indicative of tension.

Yeah. So, the moment anybody goes like this off of a chord, I'm like, "Ooh, no Rach 3 for you." [Laughs]

Mhm.

Well, have you ever played his piano? He could get away with it.

Mhm. Like from age ten.

Oh, sure, without a doubt. I would say—

For sure. Well, the—the—the way it influenced my concerto playing is—mean, if you take a piece like Rach 2, for example, or either one of the Brahms concertos, any Beethoven concerto, you're really part of the fabric very much, and you're sometimes literally accompanying. You're just sitting there accompanying. Like, think about the—the development—the exposition—sorry, the development section of Beethoven 4, and how you're just like—you're texturizing. And it's really like the wind show and the string show, and um, you know, you—you have to have that sensibility and sensitivity.I think when people are not exposed to playing concertos with an orchestra, um, from a young age, um, you know, in tandem with chamber music playing, it's very easy for them to confuse that just because they're soloists, that they lead all the time. And you'll find it very funny—and I—I—I laugh, I giggle inside now that I, every time I'm—I have a conductor meeting, I actually ask very, very frequently for the conductor to lead, because it's just safer. It's safer for me to be able to, especially when I'm not a leading texture, to be able to plug myself in and, you know, and gel. Uh-huh. But if a conductor doesn't have a strong vision, and especially in a piece like Brahms 1, Brahms 2, like, the whole thing can fall apart, because if you're waiting for me, and I'm waiting for you—and that's the thing about chamber music as well, you know, at any given moment, somebody is leading the texture, and it's not always just the first violinist.

The idea of the back and forth, and also anticipation.

Like, being able—I think I just learned from a really, really super young age to listen to vibrato.

And I don't have to look. It has nothing to do with, you know, whether I've known the person for a long time. I can hear from the vibrato when that note is going to change.

Um, well, I've been lucky enough to have had pieces written for me.

And that has been really an extraordinary experience because, um, you know, well, one of—one of the times, the composer was a bit more stringent on like, "No, I wrote it, I want it this way." But I still managed to convince them that, you know, from a pianistic standpoint, you're cramming way too much info into a very narrow space on the keyboard, and, you know, so I love the give and take.But then, like, for example, Fred Hersch, what he wrote for me, the Tchaikovsky Variations, that was so much fun for me because he let me fly with that one. He sent me—he—he sent me his, you know, what he wrote, and then I called him and said, "Fred, I think I know what you're going for in this one variation, but I think that if it was a little bit more succinct—" the opposite problem of the other—"um, I think—I—I—I know what you want. You want like pizzazz. You want this kind of Chopin-window-land thing here. I can, if you don't mind me rewriting it, I'll make it fly with it." He was like, "Yeah."

Yeah, and so that for me is so exciting, um, where, you know, we're so stifled by the dogma of—never mind Beethoven, you know, we're like, [Natasha laughs] you know, every single dot and—

There are still those people! I remember Alfred Brendel telling—asking me what I'm playing next, and I said Rachmaninoff's Paganini Variations. He was just like, "That is such a garbage piece." And I was like—

Yeah, well, it is a community of enthusiast pianists. Some people call them amateurs, I hate that word, um, because we have some people who really run their circles around like, the other day, or the other—our most recent concert, uh, one of our members performed the first movement of Chopin Third Sonata, like he doesn't have a major trading day job, you know? Um, with—with super high, uh, intensity day job.So, it's a—it's a community of people who's, uh, who do not make money playing music, and do something else. There are doctors. We have the leading pulmonologist in New York City. He's the founding member, Len Horovitz. Uh-huh. Um, and we have Simon Yates, who's, you know, head of a Japanese bank. Um, we have people who are also in media. Uh, we have a new member who—we have a couple of new members, one of whom started her own beauty company and has also been an anchor for Bloomberg, and also had, uh, a life in trading, and then we have a new member who is, uh, he owns several companies, and then also a non-profit that brings together Palestinians and Israelis through symbols and— it's just a really cool, cool group of people who all—who happen to have studied piano in their youth, and actually at a rather high level, mhm, but elected not to go into music.But how do you just let go of music? You can't just one day switch it off and forget about it.

You know, that love is always there.

Yeah, exactly. It's biological, and um, I think they have the purest kind of— they, I think they—their—their relationship to music may be more pure than most pros out there.

Thank you for having me, Michael. It's always fun to talk with you.