"Playing the Piano is a Reconciliation of Opposites" says Helene Grimaud

This link will take you to French-born pianist, Helen Grimaud's interview with Robert Siegle on NPR.

Helene Grimaud describes playing the piano as a "reconciliation of opposites" in a provocative interview with Robert Siegle. She describes her desire for absolute isolation and oneness with nature versus a desire for universal communication (in this instance) via the musical dialectic of the German Romanticists.

Helene Grimaud has a particular and unique psychological complexity derived from this juxtaposition of contradictory impulses. This is a key issue with Grimaud; the necessity for personal integration and simultaneous individuation. In her piano music, Grimaud expresses who she is, and also whom she will become.

I have a strong intuition that Helene may also have a gift for musical composition. Many of the great composers were also poets at heart and Grimaud has poetic capacity; as evidenced in her piano playing and in her writings expressive of myths and Jungian archetypes. The future will reveal itself in this regards, thinks Princess Haiku.

This link also takes one to other interviews with Grimaud and Siegle at NPR and wonderful phrases of music, described in Grimaud's own words as "touched by the heart." Music doesn't become more expressive of basic humanity than it does in the piano of Helene Grimaud.

I wish her all the best and have read online that she has recently been unwell. This is wishing her renewed health and continued musical success.


Grimaud plays Schumann via YouTube