) rile Re eee eer 03> Los Amigos de la Guitarra de Valencia il 9PAVEL STEIDL Interviewed by THERESE WASSILY SABA. IN 1989 Pavel Steidl was living in The Netherlands but was not allowed to return to his native Czech Republic, or anywhere else in Eastern Europe. In 1987 he had left the Czech Republic in, to use his own words, ‘dramatic cir cumstances’. Pavel Steidl: Well, I think that if you have to leave your home and never know if you will come back, it’s always dramatic. It’ was in February 1987. I tried to be clever. Just going to the border with a passport was impossible. First, they had to have a committee to sign that you were good enough to leave the country, and then the soldiers had to give you permission to travel. Then you had to go to the bank with all these permissions and ask for the possibility of buying dollars or western money. Then possibi- ly they would give you the stamp. then you had to the embassy of the country where you want- ed to go, and you had to wait for a visa for two weeks, Thérése Wassily Saba: Did you do all that? No! Of course not! I think they would never have let me go because I was a young and promising artist. You know I came from the Paris Radio France competition with the gold medal. They let you out to go to Paris for the competition? Yes, I went. This was one of the possibilities because with the Paris competition you had to make a recording and send it to Radio France. The jury would choose four finalists and two substitutes, in case one of these four became sick, or something. I was chosen as a substi- tute, and the second substitute was Scott Tennant I tried the Paris competition twice. In 1981 1 was one of the substitutes; in 1982 I was one of the finalists. In that ease, you went like a repre- sentative of the Czech Republic, so they would allow it. And if Radio France invited an artist to play in the final, it was impossible for the gov- ernment to say no. Who were the other finalists? Viadimir Tomeany ~ a very talented player, who is now selling bicycles - Klaus Miloslav and me. We were three Czech guitarists from three dif- ferent teachers. At that time Czech schools were at a really high level. In 1971 Vladimir Mikulka won the Paris competition. Afterwards there was somebody from Czechoslovakia in the final almost every year. Did Vladimir Mikculka escape? In exactly the same year that I won the compe- ition, he escaped to Paris. It's better to say he Classical Guitar Magazine ye Pavel Stetdl defected. I do not know the details of Mikulka’s situation in that time. I know that he was stay- ing abroad and not coming back to Czechoslovakia. But he did not ask for political asylum, Vladimir was already very well known in the whole world in that time How old were you? Iwas 21. There was a programme of almost two hours for the competition. You had to be pre- pared to play two recitals. It was quite heavy. ‘There was also a part in the first round where you had to play prima vista. Sight reading? That's unusual But it was also very beautiful, because it was the final and I had come to Europe for the first time, you know, and immediately to Paris. I had just 200 francs. They told me the address of the hotel | had to stay in. I went there, but I could- n't speak the language; I couldn't speak English, French, or anything, But as was usual with Czechs, somebody had given me the secret number of a Czech man who was living there. He had emigrated there in 1968, and he knew a lot of musicians, Someone told me that if I iBThad any problems. I could call him and he would help me. So I called him. He said, ‘Oh, I understand’, and he gave me food and a bed and I was able to go to the final. In that year three of the four finalists were Czechoslovakian. You met Robert Vidal in Paris, then? Yes, a couple of times. You know, I never expected anything from anybody, so he didn't disappoint me. Why should I expect something from him? He showed me where I was playing and when I had to be there, and said see you later. What affected me more strongly was to see the jury, you know. especially people like Antonio Lauro and Maria Luisa Anido sitting in the jury. Alexander Tansman was there also. What I remember from this competition was one important thing - we had No, it was a Kohno 15. It was not so expensive, but it was difficult to get guitars at that time in Czechoslovakia. It was very good: I would like to have it still. What did you buy in Paris? I didn’t know very much about guitars. 1 bought a Contreras from a dealer for Contreras in Paris; Vidal sent me there. It was not a good instrument, but I sold it for the same money later, so I was actually able to keep the money for the competition. But it was a story on the border with the police because they really wanted to keep the guitar and not let me cross. It was difficult to cross the border between East and West Europe at that time. It was something incredible. You came there by train and suddenly the train started jerking up and down on the tracks as you came back from West Germany and I knew I was home! Then the train to play Bach’s Suite No.3 for “ cello and there were quite tech- | “HOW CAN YOU oped, everybody had to stay hically difficult parts, Vidal @rrest Somebody — stil and then came the sol- asked Maria Luisa Anido which movements the candidates should play. She said ‘I would like to hear the Sarabande, just the Sarabande’. 1 don’t know why I really get tears in my eyes, but after all these terrible, emotional things, and then suddenly you are there and Maria Luisa Anido says ‘Sarabande’. Ah. You know how it works in the music, that the moment makes the beauty. Did you win that competition in 1982? Yes. I think it was an absolute accident. How long were you in Paris? We had permission to stay only until Friday. ‘The final was Thursday, then Friday I had to go back. But I won! When did you go back? On Monday. They let us go only for a few days and then we had to return home immediately and take all the money to give to them. This was the reason why they let artists travel: you brought them money and they kept it. It was like this. What about if you spent it on musical things? Well, I immediately went and bought a guitar, and said ‘If you want, take the guitar’. I will not tell you the stories of what happened after- wards on the way back. When they discovered that a guitar has a price not of 200 crowns but could also be worth 20,000 crowns, they got a shock! They wanted to keep it. Well, 1 don’t want to speak very much about this time. The guitar you took to play in the competition — was it a Czech guitar? 12 for playing Bach? It’s impossible” diers with the dogs, searching everything. Then came the customs officials and so on. It was so crazy, but I remember just at that moment when they came, I took the guitar and started to practise Bach. Suddenly everything and everyone started to move in slow motion - maybe ii was only in my head but it was the escape from the reality of this situation. The music was more real and makes you free. At that time, when I had to live in this system, it was so easy to escape to the music, because music was really freedom. You started to understand the words of the notes. You started to understand that in the music you are allowed to say the things, which you were for- bidden to say and that nobody could touch you = especially with the music of Jana Obrovska. How can you arrest somebody for playing Bach? It's impossible. Did you know Jana Obrovska? Very much, yes. She was the wife of my teacher Milan Zelenka. My piece And You Go to Ithaca Too is dedicated to her and part of this piece is the Prelude, which she wrote, and which was the first piece of contemporary music I played. It was fantastic to study. What was not nice is, that Jana died in 1987. It was exactly at the time that I left that she died - in the same month; it was quite hard. She was a dark woman, very beautiful, but she didn't take very good care of her health, so when they discov- ered the cancer it was already too late. It was a great pity, but what is very nice is that after years, Milan Zelenka started to write music. T would really like people to hear his music because it’s very interesting. | was lucky because I was close to the Zelenka family. Classical Guitar MagazineWhat happened after you won the Paris compe- tition in 1982? Between 1982 and 1987, I got a couple of invi- tations to Western Europe. Part of the prize for the competition was two concerts in Rome and in Milan, So I went there, and of course you would expect that there some sort of a career would start, but it didn't really happen. Somehow I fell I wasn’t ready. I have to tell you, when I went to the competition, I didn’t want to win. I wanted to come second. I thought to myself: it’s better to come second; don't win it; you need to learn so much. | felt in such a dif- ficult position as a winner, because at that time there were not so many competitions: there was Paris and that was it. It was a big competition. Well, 21 1s also so young. What do you know about the world? Nothing. You are a child, and they put you in the position of an adult, and also, they put you in the posi- tion of somebody who is already a maestro. And you are not. Thad to start to study some- where, because there was another danger for a young man in Czechoslovakia: mili- tary service. This meant that for two years you had to go somewhere, and for guitarists it was not very easy to find a place where you could play the guitar, so I had to go study in high school. But you know what was much more difficult, it was that when you were a young artist and they tried to eut you for the propaganda. This was not nice. For exam- ple, there was a television pro- gramme where they would invite some young artists. They invited me there and they gave me a paper with what I had to say. saying how happy I am that the Communist Party is taking care of my talents and that T am communist, and such words which really would have destroyed me very much. So you had to find a way to say no but still survive like a human being or like a musician. It was not easy, really. Another thing was that even the Ministry of the Interior would invite you for the interview and ask for information about your friends who were living in Western Europe. Pavel Steidl Did you say anything? No, I played a simple man, and it was not very difficult because I am a simple man. If they asked me for information about Zelenka, rd 14 immediately start to speak about how he’s a good guitarist. And they would say. ‘No, we don’t mean Zelenka, we mean the Zelenka who escaped — your classmate who defected two years ago. Do you have a contact with him? Or the Minister of Culture invited me to play a concert, and then asked, ‘Are you married?’ I said, ‘No, I'm not married.” Why not? I said, ‘I don’t feel that I have to be married now.’ He said. ‘Listen, you should marry really. You should have a family. Then you can travel much easier.” Why would you be able to travel much easier? Because then they could hold on to the family. You see, then they have somebody to keep in your country. The corruption was terrible. Really. if Communism did something terrible to the peo- ple, it was this corruption, and it takes years to get rid of it. Up till now the people are still complaining. So I decided to escape from this world, and I went to the Netherlands, very simply. I had friends there and they arranged a concert for me. They wrote an invitation for me to a concert agency in Prague saying that they'd pay me $2000 for a concert. So they had to say yes. They were really excited about the money. Yes, $2000, wow! ‘We have actually $1200 for us, and the rest he has to change.’ By the way all money from this company from this Pragokonzert went to the Ministry of the Interior and they were using this, money for spies, informants and collaborators. Very ugly. isn’t it? Very ugly. and it destroys you. I really started to be scared for myself and so I decided to go away to the Netherlands, but it was absolutely not easy. It was even worse, because in the first years there they took away my passport. because of course I was a refugee. I had a piece of paper with my name on it, and I had to go every week to the police. They would give me a stamp, and another stamp, and actually let me know that they didn’t want to have me there, and tell me to go back. I told them, listen maybe it will be better to go back but I have already been sentenced to 18 months’ jail. They would have punished you. Yes, they had had a trial, although I was not there. so I would have had to go to jail for 18 Classical Guitar Magazinemonths, but instead of that the guitar saved my life. After one year I got permission to stay in the Netherlands, and permission to live a little bit more like a human being. Actually my career had stopped for a couple of years, because my hands had started to shake. When I went on stage I was so nervous that my hands would shake. In my mind I was forever scared. The doctors were giving me some pills to pre- vent me having a heart attack! I was scared because I was in danger ~ permanently. I didn’t feel safe in my life. | was in a new country, starting something new, I had lost my family and friends, you know, it was the moment that I should have stopped playing guitar and start playing bicycles! But I think I can't do anything other than to play guitar. Actually I was not allowed to go and study in the conservatory in the first year, so I was learning I think you really have to discover what you want, and it takes time because the musician is already in you ~ you will never play more beau- tifully than you can imagine, or a more beauti- ful sound than you can imagine. So you have really to work on your imagination, but it is already in yourself. And virtuosity? What is virtuosity? I don't feel that I play fast because I don’t hear it fast. absolutely not. I think that virtuosity Is the way you can get the instrument to talk. It is talking and communi- cation. There is a very nice description that Makaroff wrote about what he felt after hear: ing a concert of Paganini. He wrote: ‘I could never describe the impression this concert made on me. I wept and I sobbed, listening to the divine sounds created by to repair heating and plumbing “ the enchanted bow of the mag- in that year. But really, I didn’t ‘What is ical instrument of that giant of think about ever doing some- virtuosity? concert music, the equal of thing else, because I still felt that I have to play the guitar. I felt like a monk who has only I think that virtuosity is the which I had never heard and will never hear again. | came home from the concert walk- one duty - to pray for some- ing like a drunken man, so thing. And the guitar was for WAY YOU CaM get yy escome was 1 by emotion. | me really the praying for some- the instrument did not sleep all night, still thing. ” hearing the heavenly sounds I think everything you sur- to talk created by this modern vive makes you stronger, but Orpheus. For several days fear is a different problem and you have to real- ly find how to fight your fears. I think if you want to learn something, fear will be the first enemy waiting for you. And you have to beat this enemy very much. It is the art of starting {o live in the moment where you are now and not to be still scared for tomorrow. Not worry- ing about: what did I say yesterday or did 1 make a terrible mistake in the concert? Why? It’s happened, it doesn’t exist and it also does- n't exist yet. What exists is now. In the present time we are making the past and the future. Now. It also works when you are playing music, You have to play the note which you have now. With technique, it’s exactly the Same. The fin- ger which you played already is there, and you have to give the energy to play another one. At the time when I played no concerts I didn’t feel very unhappy. because I had time to prac- lise. For me, to play the guitar and to go deep inside was actually the best thing that could have happened to me, because I knew if should stay in Czechoslovakia, I should have to say, yes I love the Communist Party and I've got one hundred concerts a year, but 1 would have died. So actually this terrible thing was the best that could happen to me. I also met so many people in the Netherlands who really helped me so much, And then everything changed in Czechoslovakia. 16 thereafter I was like an insane man.” [The Memoirs of Makaroff: Part I, translated by Vladimir Bobri and Nura Utreich, published in Guitar Review No. 1, 1946) Makaroff's not talking about speed. 1 think this would be very nice for young people to see this. All these ideas of competitions, that they have to play faster, cleaner, without doing too many crazy things - this is absolutely not very good music work for young people. I think that as a performer you have to find yourself and show the best of yourself; you have to find the things which you want to say, which you have to say. in the music. The uni formity of people is not so very good for the gui- tar at concerts. You have very often the same repertoire and very often the same music. And it is very often that the concert repertoire is the repertoire from the competitions. It’s great music of course, but there is more. Please also make it enjoyable for the normal human being. Segovia, his generation, his playing, Alirio Di they made people crazy about the guitar. At the moment that you start to play the same things and in the same way, then you have nothing to add. Young people are losing the public. I find very often that I don't enjoy guitar concerts and I am a guitarist! So how can you expect to get other people there? I was walking in Cordoba and I went into a house. Suddenly I heard the variations on the Mozart theme. It was such a Classical Guitar Magazinebeautiful thing and it hit me immediately. | thought, it must be Segovia. I went to the lady and asked, ‘Is it Segovia?’ ‘Let's look’, she said; "Yes, it Is Segovia.’ I went to look in the museum, and when I came back, there were two people saying ‘Who's playing this?’ Normal people who came to the museum. She says, ‘It is ndrés Segovia, it’s beautiful Then you have to say, OK, this is what it is all about. The gui tar has so many possibilities but very often I hear people playing in one colour, it doesn’t matter which articulation when there is so much to do in these things: in the movement. in the modification of the ter pos, yet I still hear so many people playing really like with the metronome, which is not the best way to make the guitar more enjoy- Next month: Pavel Steidl talks to Colin able. | think the guitar has this ability which no Cooper about Bach, Paganini, Jana Obrovska. other instrument has - it is somewhere Carlo Domeniconi, Miles Davis and Jimi between the human voice and the instrument. _ Hendrix. Pavel Steidl MARC l N IN CONCERT AT WAWEL ROYAL CASTLE IN POLAND This stunning DVD, especially imported from Poland, was, filmed in August 2008 In the Stefan Batory Courtyard of the Royal Wawel Castle. The concert was part of the new ‘annual chamber music festival ‘Wawel Royal Castle at Dusk’. Dyila Is a virtuoso guitarist whose musicianship is ‘much admired all over the world. This concert, one of the gi, finest guitar performances currently available on DVD, lig Includes; SAAN icam DDC CW svete Pos 23822949 Sone roman BEE) + Alogro non troppo, semplce 727° S{0T lela) 2 Andante espressivo 4'26" 6 3. Moment musieal vivo 3:04" 4. Allegro non troppo e serioso 5'55" Nicholas Maw (1935) - Music of Memory 18'03" Mauro Giuliani (1784-1829) 6. Rossiniana No. 4 Op. 119 1424" Joaquin Rodrigo (1902-1999) - Junto al Generalife 4'36" ‘otal time: 57°55" Sound: LPCM 24 bit, 48 kHz, stereo Picture: widescreen PAL 16:9 ‘Avallable now at RRP 15.99 Plus 10% post & packing UK ~ Plus 15% post & packing EC & Rest of the World Se AES) Porat tern ez Deo ee ne ee a eos Som URC ee ert OrC er i eure a eee Classical Guitar Magazine 17