Ludwig, lifelong

American pianist and conductor Stephen Kovacevich, who will perform in India this month, tells Arghya Ganguly about his abiding love for Beethoven’s music.

Stephen Kovacevich is a distinguished pianist and conductor, and known the world over. He is especially known for his virtuosity, and an ability to deliver a performance Ludwig van Beethoven himself might have given. This month, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai, the 11th “celebrity concert season” of the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI), you can witness Beethoven come alive through the nimble fingers of Kovacevich.

The Grammy-nominated Kovacevich, with conductor Evgeny Bushkov, will on September 24 share the language of 19th-century composers Johannes Brahms, Edvard Grieg and Anton Bruckner, together with the high romance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s score of Romeo and Juliet and Beethoven’s poetic Symphony No. 4, in performance at NCPA.

Born in Los Angeles under the name Stephen Bishop to a Croatian father and American mother, Kovacevich, who is now 70, began elementary studies in piano with Lev Schorr in 1948. In 1951, at the age of 11, he made his public concert debut in San Francisco. Only three years after his debut, he played Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major and Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor with the San Francisco Orchestra.

In 1959, Kovacevich went to London on a scholarship to pursue his piano training with influential teacher Myra Hess. A seasoned analyst, Hess quickly recognised Kovacevich’s penchant for Beethoven’s music, particularly the works from the composer’s late period. It appeared to Kovacevich, in his 20s, that the “subtext of late Beethoven was metaphysical speculation — concerning energy in excess, rage in excess, with a dimension that was almost religious”.

Later in his career, Kovacevich gravitated towards Beethoven’s early “full of fun” sonatas. “I needed the spiritual comfort that I heard in the late Beethoven. When I got older I enjoyed younger Beethoven,” says Kovacevich, through an email interview from Tokyo, where he is currently performing. The younger Beethoven, Kovacevich has said in the past, is subversive and Christ-like, “going into the temple like Christ, throwing out the phoney priests and sometimes throwing out the phoney priest in himself”. Now, he refrains from drawing a biblical analogy. “I used to be religious so I used Christian language,” he says, “but not now. [Beethoven’s] music seems to promise something eternal.” That’s all he will say.

Kovacevich confesses that he enjoyed Indian music when he was young, but hasn’t listened to it now for a long time. “I have heard people like Ravi Shankar,” he says. “Hopefully, I can listen to more local artistes this time.”