Of processes, athleticism and Scarlatti: in conversation with Tamara Stefanovich

di Filippo Simonelli - 26 Settembre 2025

Playing the piano is a very athletic profession. Or at least, this is one of the central ideas of Tamara Stefanovich. The half-German/half-Serbian pianist (but a convinced European) is going to perform in Padova at the Cristofori Festival on September 29^th. She is used to play and work with living composers, having established a long and fruitful connection with the likes of Pierre Boulez, Unsuk Chin, Magnus Lindberg and Liza Lim, to name a few. But she does not focus on contemporary authors solely, as she tries – and succeeds – in blending different voices, repertoires and centuries of music tradition into a single recital idea.

The Cristofori recital makes no exception, with CPE Bach and Scarlatti alternating with Bartòk and Boulez. Her concert gave us the opportunity to have a conversation on her repertoire choices, the discipline required to keep such standards and dealing with audiences when facing repertoires that are generally perceived as out-of-the-comfort zone.

Maestro Stefanovich is well known as a performer, but she also uses her ability as public speaker to reinforce her connection with audiences in fact. As she is used to perform complicated repertoires, she is well assured that sometimes a different approach with the public is required: “a couple words before ‘some’ pieces are welcome”, she says about the Boulez sonata she centres her current repertoire around. Our conversation starts indeed from her latest release, “Organised Delirium”: published in March, the album features three monumental 20^th century sonatas – from Boulez, Bartók, Eisler and Shostakovich – with an unexpected closing with Scarlatti. And yet her process, she explains, starts from the end of the track list, from Scarlatti itself, to recognize the Italian masters’ role in bringing the form to keyboard instruments.

The program you are currently bringing on tour reflects largely the tracks of “Organised Delirium”, your latest release. What does it feel like to bring back to a live audience a repertoire that you have faced in the studio, in general and in this specific case?

It is in both cases about communicating, but obviously with the live public, in a different acoustic you have to adapt. I have been playing all these pieces for the longest time and in different repertoire, so they have been traveling with me metaphorically and emotionally for the longest time. Of course, they are all highlighting, which is on the program this year as my personal pilgrimage to my mentor.

Boulez is the main “revolutionary” in this repertoire, especially in his declared attempt to destroy sonata form. But did he manage to really achieve this purpose?

As always words have an ambiguity to it that Pierre knew how to use to get attention. I do believe that in his case destruction was necessary for the construction and as every revolutionary, he knew his past, and he knew very clearly how to use the lose bricks of the destroyed house to build a new one. This on its own is a sign of respect, knowing your past, using the old form and filling it with new ideas.

I do believe that in his case destruction was necessary for the construction and as every revolutionary, he knew his past, and he knew very clearly how to use the lose bricks of the destroyed house to build a new one.

As you often play contemporary repertoire, not just Boulez, you have faced the issue of pedagogy. How would you explain to the public the intricacies of such scores?

With Boulez, we are talking about an 80-year-old piece so in every other art, this will not be called new or contemporary. I think that music is the slowest moving art form and pedagogy has not helped, as most of the institutions are just prolonging this idea that interpreter is more important than composer. That having said, of course I try to use tools to guide my public through the complexity and try to make them have a rich experience and not confusing one; couple words before a piece like the Sonata by Pierre is always welcomed and gives you a couple of keys that open up some of the vistas.

And what about the two other 20th century sonatas in the tracklist? How much do they resemble – and contrast – with the original sonata model and with each other?

What I’m interested is mostly the explosion of different musical galaxies in such a short moment in the 20th century -that’s why I wanted to show the expansion of musical language and how each of them tries to find their own grammatic while using an old form. This is something that I find extraordinary. The audacity of Eisler who was Schoenberg student, to be so lose and somehow nonchalant in his storytelling while being in the same time, concise and sharp, by Bartók, the absolute authority in using the form in the most classical way while experimenting with the quarta and quinta as archaic intervals and creating even a moment of folklore in the third movement, Shostakovich’s first Sonata that for me is so much more interesting than so much of his later piano pieces, here with the promise of a modernity and an incredible amount of different colours in such a short time.

Critic Andrew Clements in the Guardian emphasized the “athletic” aspect of the performance of this repertoire. How do you prepare yourself before facing such a physical effort, if any?

This is a very athletic profession anyway but yes, Boulez is really a different dimension and needs careful preparation and careful recovery as well, but I think in art you can only be obsessed, there is no middle way. My whole life is built on huge amount of structure, discipline and thoughtfulness. an amazing amount of mental preparation as well as physical loads of meditation, conscious breath, work and so much more.

My whole life is built on huge amount of structure, discipline and thoughtfulness. an amazing amount of mental preparation as well as physical loads of meditation, conscious breath, work and so much more.

Organised Delirium features also an unexpected presence in Scarlatti; in the album, he is played as a sort of contrasting coda – with the B minor Sonata – whereas in the Padova programme you will perform two other sonatas of his endless repertoire, along with CPE Bach. How much do the differences in the characters of those pieces emerge – and how much does the style required for each piece contaminate the one required for a following, contrasting one (if it does so)?

Contamination happens, not wilfully, but as an organic process. Scarlatti is actually the starting point as it is the first time that in keyboard repertoire that the Sonata form was used, so we have it presented here as an epilogue or remembrance or a cell that transformed the whole thinking of a keyboard form at that moment until the 20th century and beyond.