Revelling in Mozart

By WILLIAM DART

Stephen De Pledge quickly fills me in on the past 15 years of his career, from piano studies with Margaret Crawshaw in Hamilton and Bryan Sayer in Auckland to a four-year stint at London's Guildhall School. Winning the Guildhall's Gold Medal and the Young Concert Artist's Award from the British Federation of Music Societies proved to be the turning point and the young New Zealander was able to move from music student to professional musician virtually overnight.

De Pledge has a busy week back in Auckland. Last Sunday he played Mozart's K 453 with the Auckland Chamber Orchestra and Tuesday saw a piano recital at James Wallace's Rannoch, playing the same programme London will hear next week. Over the weekend he plays the Mozart K 488 with the Auckland Philharmonia, in the first concert of the orchestra's winter series.

De Pledge confesses, "There's nothing I'd rather do than play Mozart concertos. My ideal day would be to hire an orchestra and just play through the concertos, back to back, especially those major key ones with the wonderful slow movements in the minor."

The A major Concerto K 488 which De Pledge is performing this weekend "is one of the most fantastic".

"I love the clarinets. He didn't usually use them in his concertos and it's like the first act of Cosi fan Tutte where there are no clarinets at all, and then all of a sudden, when the two girls come in, the clarinets make their entry."

The concertos are like the operas, he says.

"They're so full of humanity and so true to life - they're human dramas in themselves. There's nothing pretentious about them. Sometimes if you are playing a work by Schumann or Brahms, you feel this artifice, as if the composer is saying, 'I'm going to show you this emotion.'

"This doesn't happen with Mozart."

Fittingly for a pianist who is keen on contemporary music and who is working on an improvisation project with the cellist Matthew Barley, De Pledge finds a special freedom in Mozart's scores.

"Unlike the chamber music situation, you don't have that much time to rehearse, so there will always be a level of spontaneity on the night. I like that."

Not that this young man doesn't enjoy the challenge of juggernaut concertos like the Prokofiev Three.

"When it comes to the big concertos like that I love the power, the feeling of fighting with the orchestra because you know the piano can always win."

De Pledge is also drawn to the more contemplative music of Estonian composer Arvo Part, so it's serendipitous that the upcoming AP programme should also include Part's Silouan's Song.

De Pledge worked with Part at Edinburgh Festival, playing the Opus 1 Sonatinas, "early works he hadn't heard since he wrote them. Part's music is amazing in that it looks nothing on the page but when you work with it, this wonderful world is revealed".

Part's reactions to performers could be unpredictable. "One minute he would be very particular," De Pledge remembers. "You'd be playing three notes and he'd say he wanted the middle one shorter, yet at the same time he could be very free. I was playing a short piece Fur Alina and he told me if I felt like it in the concert I could just play it through twice."

London is a stimulating environment, with far too much music to catch up with. Musically, there can be shocks. The name Ivo Pogorelich passes through the conversation and De Pledge laments that "things today are all about speed and volume. Anyone can sit and bash out Rachmaninov and people will love it if it's loud and fast".

Which pianists does he admire? "One is Andras Schiff, particularly when he plays Bach. It's so plain and personal. Glenn Gould is a bit like Callas for singers - even if you don't love him you have to admire him and, for sheer beauty of sound, Mitsuko Uchida."

De Pledge leans forward again and adds, with some vehemence, "That's what it's all about."