Monika Knoblochova: "there are lots of pieces still waiting for me".

The harpsichord player Monika Knoblochova is one of the most striking representatives of the young generation of Czech musicians. Her field of active professional interests is unusually broad; in addition to the traditional harpsichord repertoire of early music she includes an admirable number of pieces from the 20th- and even 21st century in her programmes, appears in a number of chamber ensembles specialising in both Baroque and modern music, and has started performing on the hammerklavier (fortepiano) as well in recent years.

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Monika, the first musical instrument that you studied was the piano, and we know that for a long time you had ambitions to study percussion as well. What ultimately led you to the harpsichord?

When I was studying piano at the Prague Conservatory I already had a special fondness for Baroque music, which for me meant above all J. S. Bach. And at the same time I liked the sound of the harpsichord. I actually started playing harpsichord only in the last two years at the conservatory, where it was a compulsory subject for pianists. But what provided the decisive impulse for me were the courses taught by the American harpsichordist Lucy Hallman-Rusell; after those I decided to devote myself entirely to harpsichord. My first steps--even before I joined Prof. Giedre Luksaite-Mrazkova's class at the Prague Academy of Performing arts--were to study in consultation form with John Toll in Dresden and at the same time studies with Prof. Hallman-Rusell in Wurzburg.

The harpsichord repertoire, orientated mainly to 17th- and 18th-century music, can seem much narrower than the piano repertoire, which has the whole Romantic period (not to mention 20th-century music) as well. Don't you sometimes miss the modern piano and the music that can't be played on the harpsichord?

The harpsichord repertoire actually includes music of the 20th and 21st centuries, although I didn't get it until later. Romantic pieces never appealed to me very much, not even at the time when I was playing modern piano. As I said, my favourite composer was Bach, and then nothing much until the impressionists. Once I really did miss the piano, and that was at the very beginning when because of the difference in touch and musical thinking Professor Toll recommended I stop playing the piano entirely for a year. Back then I would sometimes escape back to the piano, to Ravel, into another class for at least ten minutes. In that phase I missed the piano, but later I didn't.

After beginning in Dresden and Wurzburg you continued with harpsichord as your main instrument at the Music Faculty of the Prague Academy of Performing Arts (HAMU). The hammerklavier, which has recently become another professional interest of yours, isn't taught at any of the Prague music schools. How and where did you first get interested in the instrument?

When you put the question in that way, the answer is rather surprising. In fact I first encountered the instrument here in the Czech Republic, at the Academy. In the nineties the school had a hammerklavier on loan--an original instrument of 1785 made by the Czech builder Dohnal. The academy had it restored and then invited Christoph Hammer to Prague as a lector for master classes. During these classes I completely fell under the spell of the hammerklavier and started to learn this instrument as well. The next year I organised Christoph Hammer's classes myself and for pleasure I got myself a hammerklavier at home as well.

As a result you seemed to have been giving pleasure to the public as well. Is there great interest in hammerklavier concerts?

Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm getting more play from the hammerklavier than the harpsichord. My first public concert was a performance of Schubert's Winterreise with the singer Petr Matuszek, and next year I would like to do Beethoven's Variations for cello and piano, for example. The hammerklavier also gives me more opportunity to propagate old Czech music. Me and the recorder-player Jana Semeradova are performing pieces by J. A. Benda, J. L. Dusik, V. Jirovec and others at concerts. Since many early Bohemian composers lived abroad, I think these are attractive programmes for foreign concert organisers as well, because they bring together the music of Czech emigrants and pieces by their colleagues living in the same environment.

So you now have your own hammerklavier at home as well as your own harpsichord?

Yes, it's a copy of a Walther instrument of 1795, built by Gebruder Kobald in Holland. And I also have an original square piano built before 1830 by Louis Kulmbach, but unfortunately it isn't in a completely ideal state. It's not possible to play it much at present and it's waiting for a few small repairs.

What about the harpsichord?

I also have two harpsichords, both from the German builder Michael Scheer. The first was an Italian virginal based on one by G. Pertici from the end of the 16th century. After a few years I got myself a second two-manual instrument. It's a copy of a century-younger harpsichord of French type made around 1770 by Benoist Stehlin. It was because I wanted an instrument of French type that would be different from those very common copies of instruments by the famous 16th-century French builders Taskin or Hemsche.

How do you get so many instruments into a Prague flat?

With difficulty! The small Italian virginal lives under the big French instrument at the moment and I'm looking for a bigger flat.

So far we have only talked about originals or copies of old keyboard instruments. But you are one of the very few performers today who systematically uses not only copies of historical instruments but also the modern pedal harpsichord, which did not appear on concert podiums until the beginning of the 20th century. What is about this instrument that attracts you so much?

For the music of the 20th century and beyond I really unreservedly prefer a modern instrument. I take the view that while for earlier music the most important means of expression is articulation, for modern music what is fundamental are changes of colour. Thanks to pedal control of the registers the modern instrument is capable of these rich colour transformations, while copies of historical instruments can't manage easy changes of register and so lack some of these colours. The sound that the composer had in mind is also always an important starting point for me, and in the 20th century this was mainly associated with the modern pedal instrument. Another thing, of course, is that there are relatively few truly acoustically beautiful and melodious modern harpsichords, for example those made by the Gobel firm. This means that there are a large number of acoustically rather poor harpsichords among modern instruments and this has led to a lot of prejudice against the modern pedal harpsichord in the music community. But the existence of some really excellent examples shows that the problem isn't the instrument as such, but just a problem of good or bad construction. One solution for me would be to combine the tone of a good copy of a historical instrument with a pedal mechanism equipped with the sixteen-stop range of the modern harpsichord. That would allow me to combine Baroque and contemporary repertoire at concerts.

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I assume then that it was the question of the kind of sound that the composer had in mind what was behind your choice of instrument for your recordings of the complete harpsichord works of Bohuslav Martinu and Manuel de Falla's Harpsichord concerto, released last year by Supraphon ...

Yes, for that recording I used an original harpsichord made by the Pleyel company in 1939 in Paris. Since Martinu wrote his first harpsichord music, i.e. the Two pieces for harpsichord, Concerto for harpsichord and small orchestra and Promenades for flute, violin and harpsichord during his time in Paris in the thirties, using this harpsichord meant that we came genuinely very close to the instrument's sound of his time. As far as I know, this is so far the first and only complete recording of Martinu's harpsichord works on a "period" instrument. By the way, several years ago I had the chance to play Martinu pieces on a Pleyel harpsichord directly in France, at Versailles.

Getting hold of an original Pleyel harpsichord of the thirties in a state good enough for recording must have involved al kinds of difficulties and taken up a lot of your time and energy ...

Yes indeed. The idea of playing Martinu pieces on an original Pleyel harpsichord was one that I had together with the musicologist Ales Brezina, who is an expert on Bohuslav Martinu. Mr. Brezina gave me an enormous amount of help when I was looking for an instrument and supported me at moments when I was on the point of giving the whole difficult task up. I myself did a lot of research and sent out lots of letters in an attempt to track down preserved Pleyel instruments, but for a long time without finding any satisfactory instrument. It was only in the last phase that I managed to find another Pleyel harpsichord in a museum of musical instruments in Berlin, but it was in an absolutely dreadful state and unusable for our purposes. Finally I found the only possible instrument in the private collection of Mr. Neupert in Bamberg. It turned out to be in a playable state and Mr. Neupert was willing to loan it to me for the recording, but there didn't seem to be any suitable acoustic space for recording chamber music in Bamberg and we didn't want to move the instrument too far. In the end, the Protestant Church of St. Kunhuta, close to Mr. Neupert's firm, came to our rescue and it was there that the whole recording was made. I produced the recording myself as well, for example arranging accommodation for the members of the ensemble, and in the end I even tuned the instrument myself, so I can say that the CD really did take a lot of my energy. But I'm in no way complaining. I should add that the recording would never have been made without the financial support of the Bohuslav Martinu Foundation and Czech Music Fund.

Of course, your repertoire of 20th-century music is hardly confined to the works of Martinu and de Falla. Which other composers do you play at your concerts?

From the first half of the 20th century I have piece by the Prague German composer Hans Krasa on my programme. In 1999 I played his Chamber music for harpsichord and seven instruments, which is one of the first modern pieces for the harpsichord written in our country. When it comes to contemporary Czech composers I enjoy playing pieces by Marek Kopelent, for example Per Aminko which he wrote specially for me, but also the older Bijou de Boheme, and then Jiri Teml (specifically Commedia dell'arte, Diptych, Shakespearean themes, the melodrama Divadlo svet [Theatrum mundi]), Viktor Kalabis (Prihody Sisyfovy [Sisyphus episodes]) and Michal Macourek (French suite, Preludes, Scherziana, Siaram). I have also recorded most of these pieces for Czech Radio. The music of Jiri Gemrot appeals to me and so I am planning to perform his piece Hry [Games], which I have been supervising and preparing for publication.

And what about foreign composers?

I have played harpsichord music by L. Andriessen, G. Ligeti, T. Takemitsu, and M. Ohana. I like lots of pieces and there are lots still waiting for me.

You have premiered a number of contemporary pieces and some of them were even written specially for you. Which side does the impetus come from? Don't you sometimes find that composers are prejudiced against the harpsichord as an instrument that belongs just to the past?

No, I've never met negative prejudices among composers. What annoys me is more the attitude of quite a few professional musicians who reject contemporary music without even trying to get to know it. Which side does the impetus come from? It's about even; sometimes I approach composers, and sometimes they offer my pieces themselves. For example, recently Jiri Teml promised to write me a harpsichord concerto which will be presented as part of Prague Premieres Festival 2008, Jiri Gemrot is writing a harpsichord sonata for me.

What is your attitude to early music and what is known as "authentic performance"? Do you study the literature and period textbooks on music?

Of course I do, studying the literature is a source of inspiration for me. But otherwise I am guided first and foremost by my own musical feeling, and I try to put it all together.

During your studies you went to several schools and master courses in the Czech Republic and abroad. Have you observed any major differences between Czech and foreign institutions?

What was important for me was to realise that differences between individual schools are not at all definable in terms of some contrast between "our" schools and "foreign" schools, with the consequent idea that our schools are inferior or backward. The decisive factor is always the personalities of the people teaching at the schools. There are great differences between schools abroad as well, and far from all of them have yet solved the issue of an early music department in a satisfactory way. In any case, you just can't compare schools focused exclusively on the study of early music, like the centres in Basel or The Hague, with schools that are orientated to the study of modern instruments, which is the case of most European higher academies including HAMU in Prague. Schools that specialise in early music naturally have better resources, better equipped libraries, but because of the heavy schedules of teachers, you may well find yourself basically studying your main subject almost by yourself. For studying harpsichord as a solo instrument, however, the most fundamental factor remains the personality of the professor of your main subject. Here I would very much like to stress the enormous commitment to students shown by Professor Giedre Luksaite-Mrazkova at HAMU and her detailed work in all aspects of harpsichord play, such as touch, articulation, construction of form and so on. At the same time I think the Prague school is equipped with good instruments. The question is just whether there are enough of them. What I see as a disadvantage, however, is the fact that HAMU doesn't have even a small department of early music, although this is now usual at many European schools.

Apart from solo play we often hear you in all kinds of chamber groups, both with singers and with instrumentalists. Do you see chamber music as an obligatory supplement to a solo career, or is it also something in which you realise yourself?

I very much enjoy chamber music, and certainly no less than I enjoy solo play. I like meeting good musicians, and I regard chamber music as a unique opportunity for musical communication. The circle of people I work with has stabilised recently, but I also like contact with other musicians.

Can you name some of them for us?

For many years now I've been working with the recorder-player Jana Semeradova, who specialises in both Baroque and Classicist recorder music. We appear together under the name Duo Seraphim, and have a whole series of joint concerts behind us as well as a competition in authentic performance in 2003 in Munich. I also play with the cellist Petr Nouzovsky, and recently did a CD recording of J.S.Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord with him for Cube Bohemia. We've done many joint concerts and over this year we have been recording the complete Vivaldi sonatas for cello and basso continuo for Czech Radio. When it comes to singers, I work very well with the mezzo-soprano Marketa Cukrova. She and I are spending a lot of time finding and rehearsing songs by V. J. Tomasek, who is a remarkable but very rarely performed Czech composer. I also spend a great deal of time with the ensemble Collegium Marianum. Jana Semeradova is its musical director and it specialises in the authentic performance of old music and Baroque dances. Apart from that, roughly eight years ago I founded the ensemble Resonance with Michal Macourek and Petr Pokorny--it focuses mainly on contemporary music, but is not afraid to make excursions further back into the 20th century.

With all this activity do you have any time and energy left for other activities associated with a harpsichord's career, such as continuo play in orchestras or accompanying recitatives in opera?

I absolutely love orchestra. I'm most happy solo playing with an orchestra. Apart from the concertos I've mentioned already, my repertoire includes several J.S. Bach concertos and also the concertos by J. A. Benda, C. Ph. E. Bach, D. Milhaud, H. M. Gorecki, and M. Macourek. But I also get a lot out of playing figured bass inside the orchestra. Not long ago I found out what rehearsal and performance of an opera really means in a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the music festival "(Ne)vinna degustace Mozarta" in Znojmo.

Have you begin to feel any yen to pass on your experience to younger colleagues? Are you tempted to take up a teaching career as well?

At the moment I have one private harpsichord pupil, and this year I have had my first opportunity to lead a harpsichord class, at courses in early music in Rajnochovice. I can certainly see myself wanting to teach in the future, but at the level of conservatory or academy rather than with smaller children at music school.

Monica, although it is clear that in your relatively short career to date you have done an amazing amount, you still have the greater part of your career ahead of you. Could you reveal at least something about your plans for the near future?

This time with Jana Semeradova, I'm planning to record another CD, of chamber music by the 19th-century Czech composer Vojtech Jirovec. I am looking forward to a concert with Resonance as part of Prague Premieres Festival 2007, I want to publish a new solo CD, and I shall be appearing at a series of festivals. Next year I shall also have a solo recital at the Prague Spring Festival. It will include early and modern music, but I'd prefer to keep the programme a surprise.

MONIKA KNOBLOCHOVA

She became seriously interested in the harpsichord after finishing piano studies at the Prague Conservatory. In 1998-2004 she studied harpsichord at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in Prof. Giedre Luksaite-Mrazkova's class and in consultation with Prof. Z. Ruzickova. She also gained a great deal of experience studying in academies and on master courses abroad, spending a period at the Hermann-Zilcher-Konservatorium in Wurzburg and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, and also at the Dresden Akademie fur Alte Musik and the Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne. This year in June she crowned her studies with a soloist's diploma at the Hochschule fur Musik in Prof. Ch. Schornsheim's class. The young harpsichordist has also won a number of awards at prestigious competitions. In 1999 she won 3rd Prize at the Prague Spring International Competition and the Bohuslav Martinu Foundation Prize, and two years later she was a finalist in the Oberosterreichischer Solistenwettbewerb International Harpsichord Competition, which brought her an inviatation to join a master harpsichord class held as part of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. In 2002 she won the Czech Republic's Davidoff Prix for most promising young musician with the makings of a successful international career. In 2003 together with the Baroque recorder player J. Semeradova, she was awarded 3rd Prize at the Grosser Forderpreiswettbewerb in Munich, and the B. Martinu Society Prize at the Young Podium Festival in Karlovy Vary. She regularly records for Czech Radio, and last year Supraphon released her CD of the complete harpsichord works of B. Martinu and M. de Falla's Concerto for harpsichord.