d better go and look at something else, because the music profession is too difficult and too challenging to do without having a real exceptional gift for it.  They were not really eager to do anything in music.  They love music, but when my son was six, he told me that he would never be as good as I am, so he didn’t think he should go on with it.

BD:   You intimidated him?

Rogé:   Maybe!  But it’s better that way, and I was glad that he looked for other interests.  I didn’t want to put pressure on them because I’m the third generation musician in my family.  There could a break now, and maybe the next generation will return to it.

BD:   I assume that all the rest of the family is music lovers?

Rogé:   Oh yes, of course!  But to love music has nothing to do with the competition of the world of professional musicians.  I try to push everyone to enjoy music, and even to play an instrument, because you enjoy it more.  But to take it up as a profession is a different matter.  You really need another motivation than just liking music.  You want to be on stage, you want to be an extrovert, you want to perform.  It’s a different way of life.  I never questioned myself, because I was born that way.  I never realized that it was in my system even before I was born.  When one usually asks oneself what you are going to do in life, around 17 or 18, I was already a professional pianist.  So I never had to decide or to choose.

BD:   How early did you decide that you had this gift?

Rogé:   I never decided.  My mother decided for me.  I started the piano when I was three-and-a-half years old, and in the most natural way it was absolutely evident and normal that everybody was playing an instrument.  My mother was playing the organ, my grandfather was playing the violin, so music was all around.  It was natural that I was also playing music.  It was only when I went to school at five or six that I discovered that there were other young children who were not playing the piano!  [Both laugh]  This was a big surprise!  But I’ve never been forced to play the piano.  I was crying to play the piano for my mother.  She was also a piano teacher, and had students other than me.  I couldn’t stand it when other students were coming home and having lessons, because I thought I was better than they were, and I should play not them!  So, it was always that I wanted to play.  It’s never been something that has been imposed on me.  That’s the best way!

BD:   Has it always been that you wanted to play, or was there ever a time when there was a little dip, and then you came back to it?

Rogé:   Yes, there was a little dip when I was maybe at a difficult age of 13 and 14.  I was on holiday, and the other young kids would go on the beach all day.  But I would only be there two or three hours because I had to play the piano for the rest of the day, even during holidays.  Sometimes I found it a little unfair not to have as much of a holiday as the others.  But I wasn’t serious about having recreation.  I always liked playing piano.  Music has always been appealing, even if not the work of practicing the piano.  Even playing scales was not much of an unpleasant thing for me, because I knew it was to get better, to be able to play things I wanted to play.

BD:   So, right from the start, you were not just a technician but you were also a musician?

Rogé:   I hope so!  My mother was always very much looking for musical teaching, and my teachers at the conservatory were people who had been connected with the French composers that I play so often.  I’ve never been attracted to the show-off part of the piano.  When I was young, I played all the brilliant things by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, but I wasn’t really into them.  It was fun to test my ability, my technique, and see how far I could go, and how fast I could play, but very soon I discovered that there was a limitation to that, and my real pleasure was not there.  It took me a few years, because I started by playing the usual repertoire

Rogé:   Oh, yes!  Here in Milwaukee, I’m playing the Ravel concerto, which I’ve played maybe 200 times, and every time I play the second movement, I feel the same emotion.  I feel that each phrase is going for the first time under my fingers, and results in a different shape.  Of course, I have some ideas as to how it should be and how it should sound, but I know that there’s always a little part of improvisation or flexibility which is given by my feelings in the moment, as well as the piano, and the conductor.  I’m open, within a certain form and pattern.  I feel free to move and adapt myself to the piano, to the sound, and to what I want to express on that day, which might be different from the day before.

BD:   Is this perhaps what influences you to change your repertoire, or to limit your repertoire, if you find you’ve done as much as you can with a piece resulting in your no longer wanting to play it anymore?

Rogé:   Yes.  I had that feeling for some pieces when I’ve played them, and there was no more musical challenge.  As I said before, the only challenge was how many wrong notes I would play, or if there was anyone who could play it better or faster.  If there were, then what’s the point?  There are so many good pianists who can do that.  Nowadays, as a general approach to interpretation, one should feel special whatever you play.  I remember Glenn Gould saying that if you don’t think your interpretation is totally new, and doesn’t bring something totally fresh to the work, then don’t play it.  Maybe that’s an extreme point of view, but there’s something true in it.

BD:   I trust you don’t want to be new just for the sake of being new.

Rogé:   [Laughs]  No, no, no, of course not!  He was adding respect to the text and the work, because if he’s only going to play upside down to be new, it doesn’t make any sense.  You must respect the work, but at the same time you should bring something personal to it, and you think you’re the only one who can bring it.  Without sounding pretentious, I have that feeling with the French music.  I know that I can express things that are really unique to that music, and it’s important for the audience to know that they, too, are going to experience something really unusual.  That music is not yet popular in the sense that people have heard it over and over.  In many places, I play Poulenc or even Saint-Saëns for the first time, and it’s great.  You have a feeling of bringing something different, and something that people haven’t heard twenty-five times in the same season.

BD:   Is there a little bit of a joker, because even for a first performance in a city, people have heard your record, or other people’s records of that particular piece, so it’s not really brand new?

Rogé:   No, of course it’s not brand new, but it’s still more new than the Beethoven Fifth Piano Concerto.  I have that feeling of being able to bring something fresher, something that people could say they haven’t heard that often, or something more personal, something more out-of-the-way.  Of course, I still play lots of Beethoven, and I enjoy it a lot, but it’s a different relationship for other composers.  It’s a little bit like having a friendship with someone, and having an admiration for God.  Too much admiration kills the intimacy a little bit, and I feel much more intimate with Ravel and Poulenc than I do with Beethoven and Mozart, whom I admire, but they are so far away, and involve everything.

BD:   [With a gentle nudge]  Do Beethoven and Mozart intimidate you?

Rogé:   Yes, a little!  [Both laugh]

BD:   But you don’t want to wrestle with them to get them pinned down?

Rogé:   No, I’m not a fighting character.  I like to feel friends around me, and a composer with whom I can have a kind of complicity.  I don’t want to fight with composers.  If their music is too much intimidation for me, I’d rather play their works for myself, or listen to them, but not have the challenge of playing them on stage.  A good example of this is the music of Bach, which maybe for me is the music I put above any other.  I would never play it on stage, because it’s music which I don’t think was composed to be performed.  It’s more music to read, to listen to, to analyze, to live with, but not to perform.  Some years ago, I had a great opportunity to take a TV project, which was meant to be for Glenn Gould, to record the complete The Well-Tempered Clavier for the TV in France.  That was fabulous, because I had two months with only cameras and pianos, like Gould would have done, just to work and construct something, and that was it.  I never played them on stage, because I thought the right thing to do was to construct something like the music is constructed.  We are talking about instinct and spontaneity.  I don’t think one can play Bach with instinct and spontaneity.  You have to have almost as much of a fabulous brain as he had to play his music.

BD:   That requires precision?

Rogé:   Yes, and such control of every single voice.  I don’t believe that one can achieve that on stage.  I’ve never heard a performance of those works on stage which was satisfactory for me.  Maybe I was not concentrating enough.  It’s just too much.  You can concentrate to a certain level for an amount of time, but not for two hours.  I don’t believe that for the audience, and even less for the interpreter.

BD:   When you made the film for television, did you get it perfect?

Rogé:   No, of course not, but I got it as nearly as perfect as I could to my perfection.  I was able to control it, to listen to it, to redo it, and re-edit it.  I did it as if I were a movie maker.  I had all the possibilities to construct something, and when it was finished, I was satisfied with what was done.  But that was fifteen years ago, and maybe I would do it differently today.

BD:   When you assemble a recording bit by bit and piece by piece, is this not a fraud, because it cannot be performed like that?

Rogé:   No, I don’t think so.  You wouldn’t say to a writer that his book is not spontaneous because he did it in two years instead of writing it from the first page to the last.  It’s the same approach to certain works which have that kind of structure and construction, and I don’t think such works need the so-called inspiration of the moment.  I love recording, and if I had to choose between concerts and recording, I wouldn’t know which, because I enjoy both for different reasons.  They both bring out the best of an artist in communication.

BD:   Do you play the same in performance and recording?

Rogé:   Yes, except that in recording I find myself being even more adventurous than in concerts, because I know that if I go wrong in the phrasing or in the musical effect, I can go back and do it differently.  In a concert, you can’t go back.  You have to finish your phrase, and you have to finish your movement the way you started it.  So that’s why you’re less adventurous, because there’s a limit to the risk you can take in front of people.  In front of a microphone, you can take any risk, and then you sometimes discover something that works with one take, and it works with another take, and you offer it to the audience which is, as you said before, a kind of perfection.  It is your perfection at the moment you’ve done it, and you’ve controlled everything, including the sound, the speed, and the interpretation.  You are responsible for everything.  In a concert you’re not responsible for everything, because a lot of things happen outside of your control.  Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s not that good.  Sometimes you disturb and sometimes you inspire, so much more is happening.  That’s why I hate recording live concerts because I think the whole thing is a fake.  Either the people are in the hall, and they get that special intimacy with the artist because they are both there together and they experience something live, or they are in their home and they listen to a recording.  So why should it be live because the live thing is not there?  It’s not just because you hear people coughing or clapping that it’s live.

BD:   One can’t get caught up in the spirit of the moment when they’re listening to a playback of a live concert?

Rogé:   No!  At least I’ve never been able to.  I remember having the experience of hearing a fabulous concert in Paris a few years ago.  That concert happened to be recorded, and a few weeks later I heard the same concert on the radio, and I was so disappointed.  Nothing of the excitement and the magic was there, because I wasn’t there anymore, and the artist wasn’t there anymore.  The magic was gone.  It was a different experience.  Maybe I was not in the same mood, or had the same receptivity.  Concerts should be one event, and then it is finished.  It was a dream.  It was a moment you had with someone on that day, and it will never happen again.  That is what concerts are about.  Of course, recording is totally different.  That’s why I cannot compare them, and I don’t see why people think it should be the same, because the approach of listening or playing is not the same.

BD:   They are two different things going along in parallel?

Rogé:   Yes, but not against each other.  It’s really two worlds of expression, and both are essential.

BD:   We’re kind of dancing around it, so let me ask the real easy question.  What’s the purpose of music?

Rogé:   I would go with a very simple idea.  Music is just to convey emotions, and just to bring happiness to people.

BD:   Your happiness or the composer’s happiness?

Rogé:   Happiness for the people who are listening, whether it comes from me or the composer.  We are both there to bring that kind of happiness, in the sense of a moment taken from normal everyday life.  It can also be taken from all the bad things and the sad things we have around us.  This is a moment given, and we hope that it will last more than just the concert.  Music is nothing more than that, but it’s already a lot.  I’m often asked about my profession, and if I don’t want to say that I am a pianist, and I bring happiness to people.  There are many ways to do it, but I do it in my own way.

BD:   [With a wink]  That sounds like it should be illegal!

Rogé:   Yes!  [Both laugh]  That’s true.

BD:   Then is music just legal sensuality?

Rogé:   Maybe!  As I say, I’m not an intellectual.  I don’t approach music with my brain, but with my heart.  I play the music I love, and I believe that music should bring emotions and happiness to people.  I don’t want to teach them music.  I don’t want to teach them what art is all about, or what the history of music is all about.  That’s not my profession.  We have other people who can do that much better than I, but if I can bring them that kind of essential emotion, there’s no better life for me.  When people come up after the concert say they had such a wonderful moment, and have discovered music they never heard before, and was so moved, that’s all I need to know.  But it’s important to know!

BD:   When you sit down at the keyboard and you’re playing, are you sitting in front of an instrument, or does that keyboard then become part of you?

Rogé:   No, I’m not going into magic!  It’s just an instrument, and I try to do the best I can.  I think the emotion I might bring to people, but that’s beyond my control.  It’s not what I’m thinking about when I’m playing.  I think about more basic things, such as how it sounds, or how I want to do such things, or how the fingers are moving.  These are things that have nothing to do with the music itself.  People are always thinking that it is only inspiration, and all those beautiful things that you read in books.  Those are things that you should not be thinking about when you’re playing.  Those things are coming because of what you have in yourself, and what comes through the music naturally when you play it.  It’s not something that you invent in the moment.  It is something that you have in yourself already, and it comes out or it doesn’t.

BD:   That’s the automatic part?

Rogé:   Yes.

BD:   Then what do you think about, if anything?

Rogé:   Some very basic things, such as concentration, or being able to control the dynamics and the tempos, or the construction of the work and the acoustics.  There are all those technical things, and the emotions come on top of it.  My emotions at the moment I play are not important.  Sometimes I don’t even get involved emotionally when I play, because if you do there’s a danger.  I’m not really looking for that, because then you start disappearing in seventh heaven, and who knows what can happen?  There’s a French movie about actors which shows this.  There’s a very great actor who was also a great teacher.  In a very, very emotional part of a scene, a student gets very involved.  He starts crying, and gives everything he can for that moment.  After he finishes, all sweating and crying, he thinks he’s done the best performance ever of that part.  But the teacher very coldly looks at him and says that it’s the audience who should be moved, not you!  You must be aware of how it works, and how you get emotion to other people.  That sounds very square, and has nothing to do with all that we said before, but it works that way.  You have to be able to be in control.  Once you’ve felt that emotion, and you know how to convey it, then you have to learn how to do it even when you don’t feel like doing it, because sometimes you go on stage and you don’t feel like playing.  Maybe you’ve been sick, or you’ve had a bad meal, and if that happens, we’re human, but the audience doesn’t have to know that.  They are still there to have a great moment.

BD:   They should be completely unaware of what’s going on in your personal life that day?

Rogé:   Yes, exactly, so you have to be able to fake it in a way.  It’s not fake, it’s just being able to give them the best you can do, even if you don’t feel like being the best.

BD:   Rather than faking it, you are overcoming the problems.

Rogé:   Yes, that’s a nicer way to put it.

BD:   Do you have any students?

Rogé:   Occasionally I teach in France.  Every summer I have a masterclass in the south of France, and from time to time, especially in this country, I do masterclasses at the university.  I enjoy it very much as long as it’s occasional.  I wouldn’t do it regularly because it’s another profession, and I couldn’t commit myself with regular students.  But I really enjoy it, and that’s only because I think I can bring them something.  They also bring me something.  We exchange ideas, and the fact that you look at their problems and try and find a solution helps me get my solutions, too.

BD:   Are you pleased with what you hear coming out of the fingers of the young pianists?

Rogé:   It depends.  I find them sometimes a little unaware of what the possibilities could be.  They only think about getting the right notes, but they don’t think enough about what’s behind the notes.  It’s the meaning of music, and it’s normal that students think of getting it right before anything else.  When they have a technical problem, I try to help them, but that’s not what I like to do.  Teaching is trying to open doors, and trying to make them realize that they have something in their fingers that is much more important than just playing the right notes.

BD:   What advice do you have for audiences?

Rogé:   Be open minded, open hearted, and not have preconceived ideas on composers or interpreters.  I like the audience to be open when they arrive.  Especially in big cities, such as Paris, New York, and London, I find those audiences are so privileged in a way, because they have so many opportunities to hear any kind of music, and any kind of artist.

BD:   Do they have too much?

Rogé:   No, there’s never too much, but they tend to be sort of picky.  When they’ve heard something before, they lose that spontaneity of just being happy and enjoying the music.  As an interpreter, I often get more pleasure when I play in smaller cities and centers where music is still an Event, and a concert is a Special Attraction.  It’s not just one of those typical concerts they have every week.  Usually I get more feedback, and people seem to be more eager and more curious to hear that music.

BD:   Should your concerts be more special?

Rogé:   Yes, and that’s why I’m glad my career goes from big cities to small ones.  I wouldn’t like to play only in large places.  I feel sorry for some of my great colleagues who only play in New York, and Frankfurt, and Paris, and Berlin because they lose something.  Of course, it’s very rewarding for the career, but humanly I’ve had very wonderful experiences in places where they’ve had maybe two concerts in a season.  You feel that you bring them more, and that’s what I like.  

but I would like to find music again that brings me and the audience pleasure and emotion.  If it’s not possible anymore, then we are kind of a museum.  We play music of the past, and I’m not sad about that.  It’s just a fact.

BD:   We need to make sure that it remains a living museum, rather than a dead museum.

Rogé:   Exactly!  Hopefully!  [Both laugh]

BD:   [

s rubbish.  But the younger generation likes it, and it might be just a step to something different.  Every generation has had its own stupid music, but it doesn’t last.  There are things which will last because they have a reason to last in any music.

BD:   It’s our job to sort it out?

Rogé:   Yes, and time will sort it out.  Time is the best judge and the best critic, and a lot of music which has been composed recently has been forgotten very quickly.  But I believe that Poulenc and Debussy will still be there.

BD:   We can hope anyway!

Rogé:   Yes!

BD:   One last question.  Is playing the piano fun?

Rogé:   Oh yes, definitely!  Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it!  I enjoy myself with everything I do.  The piano, of course, is the first thing, but all the different things I do, including traveling, or being with other people, or visiting museums, all that is fun.  That’s why I feel I have a very, very privileged life, because I am enjoying myself!  I’m not working.  [Laughs]  I don’t say that too often because it sounds so provocative, but I don’t believe that being in the company of Mozart, or Poulenc, or Satie is work.  Some people pay a lot of money to listen to that music, to be able to get close to that music, and I’m spending all my time with them.  I remember my teacher saying not to forget you’re doing what you like, and you get paid for it!  It’s very rare.  The only advice I’ve given to my children is that whatever you do, try to enjoy it!  I remember when they were complaining about going to school, and I told them to try to find a profession that is not a continuation of school [both laugh], because they felt obliged to go to school.  You are obliged to do that, but as long as it brings you to something that you are going to enjoy, it’s worth it.  But if it’s going to be the same all your life, then I feel sorry for you, because I’ve never known that.  Music is the biggest privilege, and all the rest are minor privileges.  But it is best to enjoy your profession every day, and to know that you would do it even if you win the Lottery.  I would still play the piano, and not everybody can say that about their profession.

BD:   Those of us who enjoy what we do are very lucky.

Rogé:   Yes.  It’s not only music, of course.  Doctors, lawyers, there is a whole list of people who really do find pleasure in what they do, because the real meaning is to take care of other people.  That’s the main thing.  After all, it’s communication, and if you do something which is only for your own fun, that’s not enough.  Even if it’s to make you rich, it’s not enough.  [Both laugh]

BD:   Thank you for all of the music!

Rogé:   Thank you for your questions, and your patience.  It was really interesting.

© 199 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 1, 1999.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 2001.  This transcription was made in 2026, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.  To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he continued his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.