Catching up with Kenny Broberg
A showcase of intricate melodies and emotional depth. A passionate and lyrical ode to a lover that epitomizes Romantic expression. These are two pieces that highlight 2021 American Pianists Awards winner Kenny Broberg’s return to the Indianapolis stage that launched his win in the competition.
Taking temporary leave from his current residence in Madrid, where he is a professor of piano at Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía, Kenny will perform at the Indiana History Center on January 21, 2024.
While in Europe, he has performed across the continent in solo recitals and with violinist Maria Ioudenitch, with whom he released the album "Songbird" last year.
In anticipation of this upcoming performance, Kenny shared insights during a conversation with Lee Clifford from the American Pianists Association. Following is an edited transcript of their chat which includes a sneak peek at a new project, his approach to the upcoming program and his connection with the pieces he has chosen to perform.
LEE
Hey Kenny, great to see you! You are well into your second year at The Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid. How is it going?
KENNY
Good to see you too. It’s going well. I love teaching here. I love the students.
LEE
So what’s new?
KENNY
I'm recording complete works for Piano and violin by Leopold Godosky with violinist Sara Dragan on the Polish label DUX.
LEE
Cool. I'm a little familiar with Godowsky—I know he did some transcriptions of Chopin including some left hand only stuff, right?
KENNY
Some of it is, and some of it is both hands, but all of it is incredibly difficult!
LEE
Well you will have your hands full! So let’s get into the program: What was your vision? How did you structure it? Is there a thematic connection between the pieces?
KENNY
Yeah, to a certain extent. The Chopin and the Schumann are the two major fantasies of the Romantic era—really two of the major works of the romantic era. So there's mostly a connection between those two pieces more than anything else.
LEE
You begin this program with the Franck/Bauer piece, which while having a reputation as a challenging piece is one I’ve noticed you return to quite often. Why?
KENNY
I used to start every concert with the Franck because it's easy to start with. It's comfortable. Everyone always comes up after the concert and says how much they like it! It's just a beautiful, calming piece. I think it actually sounds better on piano than it does on the original organ because it's very hard to sing on the organ. You know, it just doesn't do that particularly well. And it's a very vocal piece.
Of course, Franck was an organist, so he wrote very idiomatically for the instrument. It does have its own quality on the on the organ that's very special. But I think the piano arrangement is very beautiful in its own way.
LEE
You mentioned the Mozart Sonata in D Major is a new one for you.
KENNY
Yes, this Mozart is one of the more interesting Mozart sonatas to me, one of the more complex ones. Even structurally, he does some things that later composers in the romantic era would do that most classical composers don't. Like are getting rid of the first theme or reorganizing the recapitulation, reversing themes, which helps to blend things together. It's not so stop and start, it's more continuous.
I think the character is lovely and it has absolutely beautiful operatic melodies, lots of different characters and a very exciting finale with a lot of different little sections and little excursions that you take in between the main Rondo theme coming back. I think it's one of his best sonatas.
LEE
You’ve been such an advocate for the music of Nikolai Medtner—it’s been great learning through you! For this concert you have two new ones that might be particularly unknown to a lot of people. These skazki or fairy tales. What drew you to these pieces besides being composed by Medtner?
KENNY
Well, the first one is probably the longest, I think, of the fairy tales [ed: there are two in Op. 48 and six in Op. 51]. It's the biggest structure. The name sounds very ridiculous in English: dancing fairy tale. Basically, it's like a rustic, sort of barn dance. It's really the one of the closest things he wrote to a showpiece. He would often end programs with it. It's very virtuosic, it's exciting. It's not quite as serious as a lot of his other music.
He's known for very dark, somber, serious music, and this is this is more lighthearted. Except it has a very interesting middle section that is sort of ironic, sarcastic in minor. It turns the theme into something completely different and sort of reminds me of Mahler’s First Symphony, the middle movements where it's a funeral march but in a sarcastic way. And it's inspired by a painting where the animals are doing a funeral procession for the hunter, so it's fake grief. They're snickering behind their backs, but it's still a funeral march. It's a very unique piece.
The second one is “A Tale of Elves,” which I have no idea where he got that from, but obviously he had some idea. It’s a beautiful piece, and it leads very nicely into the into the “Polonaise Fantasie,” which is why I picked it in that order.
LEE
Being called fairy tales—and you mentioned the imagery with the Mahler—do you envision stories when playing these two pieces?
KENNY
Medtner constantly writes “narrante”—it’s one of his favorite markings, so he always has some kind of narrative story that he wants to tell. And that's really the key to understanding his music, because when you start to follow the line in that way, it opens the music up and you start to hear it differently.
LEE
So what should we be listening for when we hear these two pieces?
KENNY
You know just following, the different characters, following the development. Unfortunately, this may be the first time that most these people hear this piece. And Medtner is not an easy composer to listen to the first time.
However, these pieces are easy to listen to compared to most of his music. There is nothing about them that is difficult to listen to, actually, but there are layers that become apparent the more you listen. It's not like one of the sonatas that I've played that are very difficult to take in the first time. That's actually part of the reason that I picked these is that they're a bit more accessible.
But, you know, even the pieces that are that are complicated can still leave a strong impression. I don't even understand these pieces the first time I hear them, and no one listens to Medtner more than me!
LEE
I think you're right!
KENNY
Well on Spotify Wrapped I’m in the one percent of Medtner listeners!
LEE
I love it! So I guess we can just listen and make up our own tale of the elves.
KENNY
Yeah the one with the elves is just constantly transforming itself. Medtner likes to start pieces off slowly and then they develop and suddenly become faster in a way that you don't expect them to.
And you know, they go in in in strange directions that you don't expect that first one, the dancing fairy tale is obviously some kind of like barn dance. It's very rustic in character, very rural. It has a very strong folk element to it, which a lot of his music does.
LEE
You are playing Schumann in the second half of the program. Tell me about that piece.
KENNY
Oh Schumann is always very layered music—there are always extra musical connotations to it.
This one starts with a quote by Friedrich Schlegel about a secret that lies in the silence. The secret is a riddle in the music that wasn't discovered until probably about 1910, long after Schumann's death. He wrote about the secret to Clara, so I assume that she understood it because it was directed towards her. The entire first movement is based on a quote that he never directly quotes. He takes the theme apart of Beethoven's “An die ferne Geliebte,” the song cycle. And the quote is the words that the singer is singing. It's obviously a declaration of love for Clara.
But he hides it. All the themes are components of this melody that he takes apart and transforms. He sort of puts them together at the end, and originally he really did do the actual quote at the end. But he decided it was too obvious, so he made it so hidden that people didn't discover it until long after his death.
LEE
How cool! Can’t wait to hear you play it! Do you recall your first experience with it?
KENNY
Well, it was a very long time ago. I mean, it's one of the major piano works in our literature. Vladimir Horowitz very famously played it in his return recital after taking a break from the concert stage for something like 12 years. And then he made a very famous recording of it.
The piece is known for the end of its second movement which is almost impossibly difficult because there are so many leaps in both hands going in different directions at the same time. Even Horowitz messes it up terribly so much so that when they released it, even though the album says completely unedited live performance, it wasn't because he made them redo it.
LEE
Oh my goodness!
KENNY
He was calling the record company telling the producers that it wasn't his fault. There had been sweat in his eyes and it was an act of God, is what he kept repeating over and over again!
LEE
Ha, that's good!
Do you have a favorite piece in this program?
KENNY
No, they're all my favorite. Everything you play has to be your favorite piece at the moment you're playing it.
LEE
I like that.
I know you've learned and played all these pieces previously. How will you work on these in preparation for the concert?
KENNY
Right now, all I'm doing is working on Godowsky. And then I need a break from the piano!
But yeah, some of these pieces like the Mozart and the Medtner are newer for me than the others.
LEE
And what is it like preparing for a concert with these pieces. What's that look like?
KENNY
It depends. You know, some of this stuff like the Schumann comes back to me very quickly because I've known it. I didn't play it when I was a kid, but I thought about it so much, and I listened to it so much that that I got a concept of it, and I listened to so many great performances of it.
Some parts of it need to be practiced technically, but I think the most difficult piece on the program is the Polonaise Fantasie for sure.
LEE
And so what does that look like? A couple weeks of practice?
KENNY
Yeah, probably.
LEE
Several hours a day?
KENNY
Yes, on that piece particularly.
LEE
All right, cool, man. Anything else?
KENNY
I think that's it. I’m off to go teach now.
LEE
Great! Thanks for your time.
KENNY
All right. Good to talk!
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Kenny Broberg will perform this program Sunday January 21, 2024 at 3:30pm ET. For those in Indianapolis, tickets are available at americanpianists.org/grandencounters. The concert will also be livestreamed at americanpianists.org/live. Please join us!