What, I wonder, drew her to late Schubert? \u2018I really love this music,\u2019 she tells me, \u2018as everyone does. But I was afraid to record it. I have always felt that Schubert should be played by an established pianist, someone older with a lot of experience. Although I studied a lot of Schubert in my early 20s, I thought I wasn\u2019t ready for this music \u2013 it wasn\u2019t the right time. But then I went to the Chopin Competition in 2021 and I learned a lot by focusing on the work of just one composer. This helped me with lots of things. After the competition I thought about which composer I wanted to focus on next and I decided that maybe it\u2019s a good time to work on Schubert. He wrote this music when he was around my age. He might have been more mature than me, but I wanted to work on his music when I was the same age as he was when he wrote it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kobayashi is talking to me online from Paris and she is struggling with a heavy cold. She pauses regularly, partly to wipe her nose and partly to search for the right words. More than once she stops mid-sentence to say that she finds it difficult to explain something in English. But she perseveres. \u2018I\u2019ve always felt a deep connection with Schubert\u2019s music, even when I was very young,\u2019 she says, when I mention the video of her at the age of seven. \u2018I cannot say I\u2019m very good at playing his music, but I feel a deep connection with it. His music makes me cry \u2013 it\u2019s too beautiful. For me anyway.\u2019 A thread of self-deprecation \u2013 possibly of not being entirely sure why I want to ask her about her piano-playing \u2013 runs through our conversation. It\u2019s charming, although not always revealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A common question one faces with Schubert concerns tempo. Kobayashi takes the second of the D935 Impromptus \u2013 marked Allegretto<\/em> and usually played with a L\u00e4ndler-like gait \u2013 unusually slowly, so that it assumes a hymnlike quality of calm. How did she settle on this tempo? \u2018I was supposed to play it faster,\u2019 she says openly. \u2018I worked on this piece after I gave birth to my first child. This was a great experience for me, having a child and realising the love that a mum has, the relationship between a mother and her child. This piece reminds me of this love. My baby was very young and maybe I wanted to sing \u2013 this piece feels like someone is embracing you. I wanted to express this kind of love and perhaps this meant it got slower. I know some people will say it\u2019s too slow, but for now I wanted to express this love at this tempo.\u2019 It\u2019s a delightful explanation, and in her hands this music takes on a meditative quality, although I suspect she is right that some will find it too slow. \u2018If I play with a faster tempo,\u2019 she continues, \u2018the music becomes too easy-going for me. I wanted to express something deeper. Maybe in 10 or 20 years\u2019 time I will play it faster.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n We talk about various aspects of Schubert\u2019s score and Kobayashi\u2019s response to it. I ask about her decision not to take the repeats in the first Impromptu \u2013 \u2018I recorded it both ways, just in case,\u2019 she explains. \u2018With the repeat, I just felt it was too long. I felt the structure worked better without it.\u2019 This may be a rather old-fashioned view and most pianists take the repeats (although another exception is Radu Lupu, so she\u2019s in good company). We talk about Schumann\u2019s description of these Impromptus as \u2018a sonata in disguise\u2019 \u2013 she can see some logic to that and certainly thinks of the set as a single work rather than a collection of individual pieces. But in truth her responses don\u2019t invite much further discussion. Perhaps I\u2019m not asking the right questions. Perhaps the language barrier isn\u2019t helping. Perhaps she\u2019s just feeling under the weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n