10 years ago by
A Pianist
That is some question! I could write a book about it! In fact I I cannot answer this in any sort of complete form so quickly, so I will begin with a couple of sketches, a few random thoughts...
Kemal was on the regional swim team growing up in Split, Croatia, then a part of Yugoslavia. Every summer they trained in an outdoor pool that was actually salt water, just a part of the harbour walled off with concrete. Every winter they trained indoors but he didn't, because he hated chlorine. Every spring, when they started outdoors again, he could still beat his teammates. You see, he was a natural athlete and still is. Only when he was 16 did his missing winter training make him lose the edge on his teammates, at which point he gave up swimming competitively.
Why do I mention it? I told Kemal once that his athletic background had a lot to do with his amazing physical skills as a pianist. He told me that was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard, but I still maintain it. His whole body is extremely well-organized physically, not just his hands.
Kemal also told me he regretted his pianistic schooling (to a large extent, the classic "Russian School") and has spent years unlearning many things he learned there. This I can understand him saying although it is not true...
His technique is entirely pragmatic. He first hears the sound he wants, and he senses the emotion he wants that sound to convey. Then he relies on his hands to produce it. He spends much time exploring how to make the piano sound in different ways. A lot of this centers along finding extremely efficient ways of making the key descend very quickly - it's the best way to increase the variety and colours of sound available to you.
In later years he worked a lot with relaxation because he saw that his sound could improve a lot if his body let go of inner resistances to movement. But his relaxation always allowed him to He worked extremely hard in his student days. He once practiced the "rocket" passages in the latter part of Mephisto for 8 hours straight. When he entered the Academy he was already highly gifted, playing all sorts of Chopin etudes and other pieces of that level. He sees his development later on as more musical than technical.
His hands are extremely strong, and his fingers have incredibly developed reflexes for movement. You see in the videos that they often rise a lot before descending into the key; this gives his sound a brilliance and plasticity which is the envy of many...
If you read my book and watch my film you will get a more complete answer - the greater part of what you see there I learned, either directly or indirectly, from him. And yet at the same time, it is no answer at all. Kemal is a phenomenon as a human being, not only as a pianist. He possesses greatness of mind in the truest sense of the word. When we meet we speak more about ancient Egyptian cultures and other more or less esoteric matters than we do about piano. It is his Being as much as anything else that gives him the technique he has.
If you want to acquire something like that, look at your whole life, your whole understanding of the greatness of music and what it can communicate, and try to hear the essence of what the greatest pianists communicated, that indefinable something that goes so far beyond mere sound. And then confront your own limitations and try to surpass them. This will be painful but it is the only way.
