 Hello and welcome. My name is Dominik Rahmer. I'm editor at G-Hinder Publishers. And with me today is a dear guest and friend of Heinlis, a pianist and artist who needs no introduction. Marc-André Armella. Bonjour Marc, thanks for joining us. Yeah, of course. It's a pleasure and a privilege, really. The occasion for a short talk is quite an enjoyable one. This year we celebrate Rachmaninoff's 150th birthday. And Rachmaninoff's music is that what has kept us too busy for the last years. So let's talk about that a bit and our collaboration. Come to think of it, actually we celebrate a little anniversary as well because exactly 10 years ago I wrote my first email to you and asked you if you would like to join our efforts and provide your fingerings. And so you said yes, obviously. And here we are. And 14 editions later, actually. 14, okay. I think we're lost count. And I counted the pages. Did you know that so far you have provided fingerings for 650 pages of music by Rachmaninoff. Can you imagine that? Well, it's been enjoyable from the first page to the last, I can tell you. I mean, every work is special, of course, but the third concerto is really to my mind extra special, you know, because it's really the one that has attracted most young pianists attention, I think, especially recently. So I feel like in my own way I'm performing a useful service for pianists for this particular work. And the work is really very rich and very complex. It offers a lot of possibilities. It suggests a lot of possibilities for fingering. And I'm sure that some other pianist's fingerings will differ markedly from my own. But nevertheless, I felt very honored in offering my own solutions and I hope that they prove to be useful. Yes, I'm absolutely sure of that. And let's not look back only but look ahead. And we have a very good project in front of us. Our latest project saw the biggest ever, the much awaited third piano concerto, monumental edition and monumental work, of course. And some months you sent me your fingerings. And when I opened your email, there was really pleasant surprise because there was not only the fingerings, but you also sent me a special handwritten appendix. Maybe you can talk about that a bit. Can you explain what you sent me there? Well, certainly. Well, I felt that in quite a number of passages, 13 of them to be exact, because I have the sheet in front of me. The fingerings that I had in mind were too complex to be notated in the usual way with just with numbers or with, you'd call them strich or a little brackets, I guess. Yes, like hooks. Which hand plays what. So these passages, and most of them are very, very short, maybe a couple of bars. They these passages re, well, this necessitated renotation. And parenthetically, I should add that it's good that we have a an extensive performance and recorded history for a work like this, because if it were new, if it were a piece that no one had heard before, or never had been performed before. I think every pianist on earth would be scared by what are very, very black pages. As as Frank Zappa once said, you know, one of his works is called the black page, lots of lots of notes, really. And I mean, every almost every page, especially the way that it's engraved that it was engraved in the original Good High Edition is really crowded. And I think that from past experience, I think your type setting at Henley will attempt to address some of that. I think there's every chance that the pages will look less crowded. Am I right? That is correct. And I think that we use like 30 pages more than the original edition. Well, that's that's great. So you have made maybe more page turns eventually, but I think in the end you will play it by heart. And so there's no need for turning pages anyway. As far as the learning that the music is concerned, I think that the music will look a little bit a little bit less scary. I hope so. Yeah, maybe it will almost look easy. So your recommendations, maybe you could show us an example or what did you exactly do for Well, one very, very short example is near the beginning of the concerto, which in the original, the sixteenths that were played by the right hand were played by the left hand and vice versa. And to me there was no reason for that to be necessary, because the passage can sound identically well, well better without so much effort. And another example is in the wonderful middle section, the waltz section of the second movement. Now, I fixed it so that there's one more note to play in the left hand for each of those beats and one fewer note to play in the right hand. And it makes, I mean, you're still crossing hands at this point, but much more elegantly, and the passage will sound just as clear if not clearer. If you played it as Rachmaninov asked, you would have not triplets, but three note figures repeated in the right hand, which causes you to, causes the left hand to have to jump higher. And then you lose some of the line and some of the speed as well. So this allows you to play this passage much more seamlessly. So these are just a couple of examples among many. There's actually 13 of them that I found in necessitated renotation. Right. And I know there are some pianists who frown upon renotating or redistributing notes between hands and sometimes, because they say, well, the composer wrote it like that, so you have to play it like that. Well, Rachmaninov really was such a purist or what do you have approved of your solution? I mean, Oh, yes. To be able to tell for sure. But I mean, I mean, try to play the fugue of the Hammerklavier sonata exactly as it's written and see what happens. That's all I'll say. And there are extreme examples for the fugue who have played it. I mean, I never learned the whole thing, but the second sonata by Boulez, for example. I mean, if you play, you can't play it as written, you have to redistribute everything. So I guess you have to, as far as composers go, you have to sort of determine it as a case to case basis, because composers have different feelings about their notation, but I can cite it as another example, a quite non-handly composer, Francis Poulenc. Sometimes you see either in his songs or in his piano music, respect this fingering scrupulous. Whereas, I think in every case, there is actually no reason why you should. Because another fingering would be musically just as good. As long as the music sounds well, then I never, ever, ever have any hesitation anywhere, myself personally, to redistribute if I need to. And sometimes it just happens on its own, without my having to figure it out. That's instinctive for physical necessity. Thank you for those insights. One last question regarding concerto. There are, you know, two cadenzas for the first movement. One is written in a CS systems, and it's in small print, but actually it was the first one that Rachmaninov composed. And then later he maybe had certain thoughts about this cadenza being too difficult or too heavy, and he replaced it in the printed edition with a more lyrical, let's say, cadenza. What do you think about those cadenzas? Do you play both? Do you prefer one to another? I remember the first couple of times that I performed the work, and I was already in my late 20s, so I didn't learn it as earlier as many of my colleagues have. I played the heavier one, the bigger one. But I came to realize that it really, well I felt like it threw the whole movement out of balance, formally, structurally, architecturally. So I've been very happy with the short of them. Mark, thank you so much for taking your time and having this little talk about that concerto. And are any Rachmaninov concertos coming up now for you? Do you play any of those concertos? Yes, the second and the third actually are slated. And I think there's a plug-in in Europe City as well. So if you're anywhere close to our public and audience, if you have the chance to listen to Marc-André playing, don't miss it. So bye-bye, thank you, and see you soon. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.