Christian Zacharias (3/5): There are no colors in music

At his youngest age, Christian Zacharias developed a real passion for the visual arts, especially for modern artists like Klee, Miró, Tàpies, or Chillida,” he emphasizes. But when it comes to music, he strongly resists any attempt to describe it with images. “I am against all words that sound visual. Footsteps in the snow, is that an image? No! No colors! The word ‘colors’, that’s the worst,” he exclaims vehemently. For him, this type of vocabulary betrays the essence of the musical: “Harmonies, melodies, these are actions, characters!”

Music, as he conceives it, thus escapes the usual categories of language. It is neither representation nor translation, but a direct experience of the present moment: “My sound, for example, cannot be learned or taught. It’s like for a singer: their timbre is unique. Of course, we can talk about pedals, technique… but all of this comes from the ear, from what the pianist hears internally and seeks to reproduce,” he concludes unequivocally: “To understand, you have to listen to the music. You can neither say it, nor see it.”

Faithful to his convictions, the pianist is uncompromising when it comes to music. At the heart of his artistic maturity, when he discovers Mozart, Schubert, and Haydn, he abandons Chopin, his first musical love. He deems it incompatible with the quest for stylistic purity demanded, according to him, by the repertoire of German composers. “Mozart, Schubert, it’s more difficult, because it’s more demanding,” he affirms. Of course, he will later return to Chopin. But at that time, Chopin seems too immediately enticing, almost magical, a music that “sounds right away,” whereas Mozart, on the contrary, requires time, attention, and merit.

The demanding, meticulous, and precise nature does not scare him. The pianist particularly recalls his collaboration with conductor Sergiu Celibidache, a terror for some soloists due to his sense of detail “a bit exaggerated,” admits Christian Zacharias: “His approach is disconcerting, I know many pianists who have been literally blocked. However, his cosmic vision of music has brought me a lot. He teaches how to follow where harmony comes from, where it resolves. We completely focus, there is a real deconstruction work between the orchestra and the soloist, with many repetitions in the work.”