Cleaning up some old website bookmarks, I came across
this extraordinary radio interview with Condoleezza Rice which aired on public radio station WNYC in New York at the beginning of 2005. The link contains a transcript, but you can click on a link within the site to play the entire show. I've got to say that Rice has always scared me a bit, because she always seems wound so tight. Naturally since she works for an administration I detest, that's tended to affect my view of her as well. I've known of course about her extensive study of classical piano, and the fact that she continues to play the piano to the present day. The couple of very brief clips I've seen of her playing confirmed certain ideas I had of her---she was playing quite competently, but you could easily see the obvious tension in her physical approach---wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, even jaw, all locked tight.
So it came as a revelation to read this transcript of Gilbert Kaplan's interview with her on this radio show. You can see or hear it for yourself, but I just wanted to mention several things that impressed me tremendously. For one thing, rather than parroting the media's oft-repeated line that "she gave up a career as a concert pianist, etc.," Rice speaks quite humbly about her realization after sophomore year college that "I was pretty good but not great... I thought I'm maybe going to end up playing piano bar or playing at Nordstrom, but I'm not going to end up playing Carnegie Hall and so I started looking for something else." Secondly, she speaks about connecting things artistic and spiritual to real-life experiences, specifically a powerful moment she felt in 2000 standing on the Mount of Olives in Israel and recalling her love of the
Beethoven oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives."Finally, (and maybe this is not surprising considering that she is an intellectual at heart) her knowledge of music extends beyond the mere playing into a pretty comprehensive understanding of style and history. For example, she cites
Mussorgsky's "Khovanschina" as an opera she loves, before mentioning "Boris," or when she speaks of the
Russian "Five," or her perceptive understanding of timbral issues in discussing how certain of
Brahms' "Haydn Variations" work better in the original two-piano version. Oh, and then to top it off, her favorite pianist of all time (and this REALLY stunned me)---was
Artur Rubenstein. Go figure. Somebody I had pegged as a
Stoic turns out to admire the ultimate
Epicurean.So my next question is, how can she stand to be in the same room as that smug
Philistine?