Hyung-ki Joo is a man of many talents: he is a connoisseur of tradition and a discoverer of new paths, a cook and gourmet, an ambassador of music and inspiration, and an enthusiastic designer of luck. I talk to him about the private Hyung-ki Joo, the pianist, composer, and nonconformist, the musical humorist, the teacher and the perpetual learner with an honorary doctorate...

Read the second part of our fascinating conversation here! (If you missed the first part, you can find it here)

Your resume in the program booklets and on your website often starts with the words: Hyung-ki Joo was born…

Well, that’s a fact!

 …Personally, I think this approach is great. Not only because it is so funny, but because for me it says everything essential…

[laughs]

…and it shows us the absurdity of everything superfluous so drastically. What is essential for you in your life - and what can you really do without?

[laughs] Well, that’s a crazy question. Only because one could talk for hours…so…what’s the essence and what I could do without…wow.

You discover the essential things when you are suddenly deprived of everything. I think in some ways the person that has nothing to lose is in some ways the lightest person. Because if they have to pack the bag and move, there is nothing to pack…

Ok, beside the obvious things, food, warm blankets, a place to sleep and all that, I think the essential things are to have people you can trust. People who are around you who are lovely, who are kind. If you have trust and kindness and love around, you can overcome any situation, no matter how disastrous things are.

What I could definitely do without is negative energy, being around energy that is complaining about things which don’t really need to be complained about. Being focused on things…

 …not worth being focused on…

…exactly! I think we all need to have a reality-check at least once a day. I once read a book, where a very successful CEO says that once in a while they go and stay in some cheap two-star-hotel for a night.

…is it?

Is it? …It just seems to be, that’s the real danger! If you stay at home and don’t go out, then nothing will happen to you – in theory. But I think, that defeats the purpose of life. You need to cross the road! You might get hit by a car. That’s bad luck, hopefully you survive the crash. But if you don’t cross the road, you won’t explore – and you won’t get out of your cozy comfort.

I read this great quote by John A. Shedd: “A ship docked at the harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” In other words: You have to face those storms, you have to take the risk that you will drown. If you don’t, you won’t discover the new world.

"Discover the new world" is the perfect keyword: You started playing the piano at the Yehudi Menuhin School and later earned your degrees at the Manhattan School of Music. Do you remember what it was like to hold your diploma in your hands?

[strong laughter] A lot of my so called “achievements” were to please my father. I think, my degree meant a lot more to my father than to me. For my master’s degree, I did not even go to the ceremony. My father came to my bachelor’s degree ceremony. That shows, how important it was for him, because he had to fly all the way from London to New York. That ceremony, seeing his son, dressed up with a funny hat and the whole graduation cloak, receiving that piece of paper, meant a lot for him. For the master’s degree, he did not fly over, and so I did not attend the ceremony.

So, your diplomas meant nothing to you except having them?

I recently was awarded an honorary doctorate from Manhattan School of Music. When receiving that doctorate, I also had to give a speech. So, I spoke to the students. And what I told them about the degree was something like: Those pieces of paper that you are going to receive today, some of them are going to hang on a wall, some of them are going to collect dust in an attic. But they’re all exactly identical, except for one thing…your name! Your name on that piece of paper makes that degree unique. So, don’t praise the piece of paper, but celebrate your uniqueness and follow your unique path – as difficult as it may be. Create your own niche.

That probably sounds easier now than it really is … where is the mistake?

I think, we promote ourselves way too much. We define ourselves by our degrees and our achievements – but this whole thing of expertise is a very risky thing. Of course, we rely on experts, we want to be experts, but again: a lot of experts get stuck in their expertise and they don’t see solutions outside the expertise. So, experts can be misleading. Medical doctors’ degrees can be misleading…

…So, what I deduct from your words is that some aspects of classical music are stuck in the classics…

Absolutely! Alex Ross, a great writer on music, wrote in the opening chapter of his book “Listen to This”:

In a way, “classical music” should have had another name. It should have been called just “music”!

Today you are world-famous for your comedy duo Igudesman & Joo. What was decisive for your decision to take a completely different professional direction with Aleksey Igudesman?

It wasn’t really a decision – it was more of a need to try and solve the problem of classical music, or at least address it from our perspective. As I mentioned earlier, I was the person who loved classical music the most, but sitting in concerts often made me want to leave the concert hall. So, I wanted to create a concert experience around classical music that wouldn’t make people like me want to walk out.

At the same time, I wanted to make classical music more accessible to people who had never had access to it, or who felt alienated by it, or even intimidated by it. This might sound a bit self-aggrandizing, but I really did this because I love classical music so much, and I wanted to share that joy and passion with as many people as possible. Mixing it with humor and theatricality is just one approach, but it’s a very effective way to draw people in.

Victor Borge once said, "Laughter is the closest distance between two people." And the Dalai Lama has said something like, "When you meet someone, start by telling a joke, and you’ll be connected." Just by laughing, your body relaxes and opens up, and your mind becomes more receptive to creativity. So, if you can find a way to bring back the lightness – lightness and laughter are cousins, after all – then you can connect with your audience. But if you start with a heavy, overly serious introduction, you risk losing them.

Thinking back to your studies, how often were students warned about the risks and how often were you encouraged to see the possibilities?

There was almost zero warning. And there was almost zero encouragement to explore other possibilities. I think that’s one of the biggest failures of the classical music education system. Most classical music training is designed to produce soloists. A soloist is a very particular type of musician, one who has to play 30 concertos – effortlessly, flawlessly, from memory – at any given moment, under extreme pressure, on TV, radio, you name it. Night after night. But just because you can do that doesn’t mean you’re a true musician. There are pianists out there with fingers so fast they could light a bulb from the energy they generate. But if you gave them a slow movement from a piano trio to play, many of them would crumble.

But give them the second violin part in Schubert’s Rosamunde quartet, and they’d probably fall apart. Ask them to lead a chamber orchestra, and they’ll likely fail. And here’s the problem: there aren’t enough jobs for soloists. So, we produce all these musicians, but there’s only room for a few. What happens to the other hundreds of thousands?

The situation seems desperate... Is there a possible solution?

There are many other ways that you can be satisfied and even earn a decent living by being a musician! Of course, you need to be able to provide food on the table and afford a roof over your head. Remember how I spoke about the joy and response that you will get from playing for elderly people or sick young patients – you will never get this from playing in Carnegie Hall! Never! No amount of money or standing ovation could even come close to spending a few minutes playing music for people who don’t have access to music!

And you just come down to the question: Why I am a musician? Why I am playing music? What is music for? Those questions you have to answer yourself. I am not putting down playing in Carnegie Hall. I loved playing there, and I hope I have opportunities to return. In fact, I wish for everybody to have that experience. But that’s just an experience. It’s like going to the Himalayas, going to the Bahamas, riding in a helicopter, seeing a penguin, having a nice video with you swimming with a dolphin. These are nice things to do, but they are not necessary. They are not things, that really fulfill you as a human being…

 … it’s not essential …

It’s not essential! You can live without those things. If those are the only things you’re hunting for in life, I believe you’ll be left with an unbelievable emptiness within you. I have seen it. I have friends and colleagues who are extremely successful – extremely wealthy – and yet they're so uninspired, so jealous, so empty. You just don’t want to go there! And we all think, "Oh, that’s not going to happen to me." But what makes you so sure it won't happen to you?

So, what do you think should be taught, apart from the instrument itself?

We need to be taught how to deal with both success and failure. Whatever you define as “success,” we need to learn how to lead a fulfilled life, even if that means doing something different from what we were originally trained for. The more prepared you are for real life, the more options you’ll have from early on. And these options can be very specific, even within the training of a musician.

For example, we should all be taught to improvise, how to read jazz chords, and how to play in different styles. You can practice sight-reading, chamber music, or playing with singers. You can even compose. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest composer, but you can create arrangements for others. There are so many paths you could take.

Just having those skills gives you so much more freedom and opportunity, more output.

… and input …

Exactly! Output and input!

In a great project with the ONJ, the national youth orchestra in Luxembourg under the direction of Pit Brosius, we worked together for the first time in the piano duo project. For the first time in over 20 years, I experienced you not as a comedy artist, but as a highly trained, perfectionist classical musician who is himself in the tradition of great artists and passes on his knowledge with such consistency.

Which traditions do you break with as a teacher and which do you deliberately hold on to?

[laughs] Tradition is a constant, that always has to be treated with care! Anything, that is tradition for the sake of tradition, is not good anymore: “This is how it was done, so it should be like this…”. Whether you think today is worse than before or not: Today is all you have! The best time is now. And even, if it’s not the best time, it’s the only time: The – only – time – is – now!

You need to live today, instead of trying to live up to the past or trying to look into the future. I think, many things, that were discovered by people before us are golden, of course. We are standing on their shoulders.

But we don’t live today like we did a hundred years ago and we don’t breathe like we did a hundred years ago. I am not saying that its better or worse. But the point is, that today we are different as human beings as we were. So, we cannot just import a tradition and bring it in today and make it fly. It has to be treated with taste, with sensitivity, with careful thought.

But surely there must be something that you want to preserve and pass on…

One thing, I would definitely try to pass on to the next generation of musicians is to listen. I believe, that one should never really play a note without listening to it. And that’s something I inherited from certain teachers. I had one teacher who told me: “Even when you are tuning and giving the “A”, you should listen to how you give the “A”. Be always involved in the process in the act of listening. That’s something I would definitely try to pass on.

…You almost answered the next question:

You allowed piano duo to accompany you with the camera for a week during the rehearsals, your workshop and the concert with the ONJ conducted by Pit Brosius. We experienced you during the filming not only as a great humanitarian and patient teacher, but also as a musician who gives enormous importance to every detail. I remember you working with the percussionist for minutes on the sound of the "whip." Minutes of rehearsal for a single, short, bright, sharp beat with two small wooden boards. Is there any detail at all in music for you to neglect? And what would be the least important for you in a successful interpretation?

Without a shadow of doubt: the least important thing is whether someone makes mistakes …

… wrong notes?

Wrong notes, out of tune, whatever … that’s absolutely unimportant.

When we look back on all the concerts we've attended, the ones that really moved us, we can't remember if there were any wrong notes. If something truly touches you, you just can't recall what went wrong.

But there is one thing I’m very allergic to: when musicians are simply told to "play together," to be synchronized, for the sake of being synchronized. A lot of musicians just try to play in unison for the sake of playing together. But what really matters is having a shared breath, a shared pulse, and a shared vision of where you want to go. If it happens to come together, then that’s the bonus.

I think that should always be the priority. In fact, it’s the same with piano playing – each voice should move in its own way. That’s why Bach fugues on the keyboard are so incredibly hard, because if you allow for true independent polyphony, it becomes a whole different challenge.

I also remember another story: you explained to the musicians that, for our ears, "oblique" notes or "wrongly composed" notes are not a fault of the composer, but are composed with well-considered intention. And that is exactly why one should not try to fade out these tones by deliberately playing softly or lacking accentuation. Quite the opposite: You encouraged the young musicians to additionally emphasize these "crooked" sounds – these musical blemishes...

How important is the composed flaw in music? And should it be important - why is flawless playing so important?

Again, I think, there’s some kind of need or conditioning for classical music to be clean and pure. And if its clean and pure, then it must be good. But a lot of classical music is extremely “dirty”. I mean “dirty” in a wonderful way. It would be quite safe to say, that if there is something in the music of the great composers that seems to be a little bit abnormal, quirky, dirty or wrong – it’s 100% deliberate. They didn’t do that by accident, they weren’t deaf. Even Beethoven had a remarkably precise idea of how he wanted certain textures to sound.

As humans, we cannot live in a sterile environment. We need the bacteria around us. But a lot of musicians put disinfectors and sterilization fluid around all of the music to make it extremely clean and perfect. Music is a part of nature and therefore it’s natural that, due to the harmonic structure, due to the frequencies of the harmonics, music cannot be “clean”.

To stay with this metaphor: How can we imagine the difference between music with and without bacteria?

When CDs first came out and they started with these high-definition recordings, they removed a lot of the overtones, as well as the high and “dirty” frequencies. I’ll never forget listening to an LP by a pianist named Maria Yudina, playing the Schubert Sonata in B-flat major. At that time, it was just the most unbelievable interpretation to me. I said to myself, “I have to get this on CD!” So, I searched for weeks – months, even – and one day, I finally found it and bought it immediately. But when I listened to it, I was extremely disappointed. I thought, “Oh, this cannot be the recording I heard!” So, I called my friend, who owned the LP, and asked, “Can you read me the date and the place of the recording?” And – it was exactly the same recording I had bought. Exactly the same! But it was two completely different experiences.

But aside from this story, the best listening experience you can have is when you’re listening to a 78 RPM record. Yes, there’s a lot of noise, it’s not clean, you can hear the needle, you can hear the grooves. But I swear, you feel like the artist is in the room with you. Heifetz is there, Édith Piaf is there, Elvis Presley is there! They’re not somewhere far away. When you clean up the sound, you lose the essence of that.

And it’s the same thing when you “sterilize” the interpretation. When you try to make music too polished, when you package it up perfectly, you lose something vital. Technology has not necessarily improved the listening experience in the way we think it has. And I would say the same with musical interpretation – you must not remove the “dirty notes.”

What quality do you personally value most in your musical partners?

Flexibility. Empathy. Listening. And a willingness to try anything.

Speaking of "partners": How important is a good grand piano for you?

There’s no question for me, as a pianist, that the instrument makes a huge difference in how comfortable you feel and how much you enjoy what you’re doing. When the instrument is not matching up, not responding easily to what you want to do, it becomes more like work – less enjoyable, more stressful.

On the other hand, I believe that’s my job as a professional pianist. I’m not a pianist who can afford to take my own instrument around; I don’t have that kind of status. Like most pianists, I am subservient to whatever instrument is there. Most of my teachers told me to never blame the piano. It’s my responsibility to be better than the instrument.

Once, I complained about not finding a practice room with a good piano. My teacher said: “Well, go and find a practice room with a bad piano! You should practice on as many bad pianos as you can – that’s how you’ll develop technique!” Technique means being able to identify the problems as quickly as possible and figuring out how to adjust to them. The more you familiarize yourself with the different qualities of pianos, the better you can cope with various challenges. And there are always pedals that don’t quite work and keys that don’t quite sustain.

Has the situation of having to play on bad grand pianos improved as you've become more famous?

My performing career started relatively late, so I wasn’t given the privilege of having a five – star career from an early age, where only the best pianos are delivered to you. Ironically, now that I’m in the fortunate position to play in some of the most wonderful concert halls and they bring out their expensive pianos, I have to say, most of them are of really bad quality. I think the quality of piano manufacturing has gone down drastically. So, even in these prestigious concert halls, with a wide selection of 9-foot grand pianos from the top brands, I’m still having to work.

So, nothing has really changed: You play on the newer pianos today, but pianos have become worse in the meantime...

There are lots of concerts, where it’s just like: “Houston, we have a problem!” We have to somehow manage. And so, it’s like: I have to work! There’s a lot of energy that goes into trying to make it work, leaving little space for dreaming, being creative and fantasizing.  It’s not much fun; it’s work.

And how exactly does this work look like?

If I have a chance to warm up and to try the piano before the concert, I try not to be negative. I try not to allow my disappointment to take over, because that’s not going to help. My next thought is: How can I solve whatever I can, if the technician is not around. A lot of things a technician can’t solve either. And then it’s like: ok, I have 45 minutes – to make friends with this piano. Somehow, I try to put into the piano everything that I want it to be. I have never ridden a horse but it’s kind of like taking a horse, mounting a horse, whispering to that horse to say: “Hey, look, we are partners. Let me ride you, we have the same goal. Let’s be friends.” I really do think of a piano as some kind of a living being, some kind of a living organism. 

What qualities should a good grand piano have for you?

You reminded me the other day of an interview that you and I did a few years ago when you asked me this question: What is a beautiful sound? My answer was something like: Whatever sound the music needs!

If I had to sum it up in one sentence: A great piano is an instrument, that can give me the sound that I think the music needs – at an immediate command.

I don’t like pianos that are better than me. What I mean by that is, if I strike the piano in not a good way, but the sound that I get back is actually quite good, I am dissatisfied! I feel like I’m cheating, because I did not give that information! I should have got something uglier back, somehow fitting to the way I approached it. And when I feel like I don’t have an influence on that, that drives me crazy! Those pianos I don’t like!

Your duo – Igudesman & Joo – will retire from touring at the end of 2025, which means you will continue as a solo artist. What does this mean for your musical projects? What can we look forward to?

Well, even in this last year of performing with my duo, I have several solo projects that I’m incredibly looking forward to. I started 2025 by performing Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. They are really one of the finest groups of musicians and so I feel super lucky to have collaborated with them. I have several performances with the soprano, Asmik Grigorian, not only a lieder recital at Milan’s La Scala, but we also will perform a show we created together – “A Diva is Born” at the Salzburg Festival and we will return to Vienna’s Staatsoper, where we gave the World Premiere last year.

…is it more a show than a concert, or something in between?

Let’s say it’s a concert in the way that concerts should be – in my opinion. I can’t define that, because I don’t have a fixed idea of what a concert should be. I always want to be very clear about that: I never think that my way of doing a concert is the only way to do a concert. As I said before, you can also play an evening of Bach and Beethoven, without any extra gadgets or special effects, and it can be one of the most engaging experiences. It all depends on how you perform it and how you present it – with lightness.

Every concert should be an experience of surprise. If you watch a movie or read a book and you know what’s going to happen, it’s not a successful movie or book. If, after two minutes, you already know who the murderer is, what’s the point of watching or reading? And it’s the same with a concert.

Retiring from my duo also means I will have more time to compose. I recently completed a book of 10 piano pieces under the album title Childhood, each piece reflecting an aspect of childhood, some of them very personal to me. I am also currently working on a song cycle with a unique approach to the lyrics. The texts are all from writers who have an affinity or connection to music, or from musicians who also write. I completed the first song, which was premiered last May, and it’s based on a text written by Alessandro Baricco from his novel Novecento. Novecento is about a pianist who spends his entire life on a boat and never sets foot on land. He was actually present at the premiere, which coincided with the 30th anniversary of his book – a total surprise to me!

Can we look forward to a reunion with Hyung-ki Joo and our piano duo project?

It’s interesting because I don’t even think I’ve really left it. [laughs] Somehow, I feel like I’m still there. Whether you want to call it a reunion or a continuation – absolutely!

First of all, it’s extremely fortunate that you found these pianos, or better said, that these pianos found you, a good carer. As we both know, many pianos are just badly treated, even by concert halls. They’re treated like furniture or whatever.

I haven’t met the older piano yet, but I have heard it – and it sounds beautiful! In the meantime, I’ve listened to some of the things I did on the younger piano, like the Ravel Concerto and my piece Chandeliers, in Luxembourg with the orchestra. I’m really proud to be associated with this project.

Earlier, I mentioned that one has to make friends with a piano because it’s a living organism – and I think I made quite good friends with your instrument. There were some things that were challenging, some problems to solve. It’s very interesting, actually, because one of the tricky parts – I’m sure you remember – was that last trill in the second movement. I learned a lot from that experience: One of the things you told me was that the black keys and the white keys are not the same – they have different levers. So, instrumentally speaking, Ravel composed a very difficult trill! But it’s possible that it worked wonderfully on Ravel’s Érard! As you said, the older pianos were constructed in a different way. But since then, I’ve tried that trill on other pianos, and I’ve found exactly what you said. I don’t think it’s me; I think I’m capable of playing a trill, but especially in that octave, it’s not an easy one.

But again, you solved problems seemingly with ease and quite quickly. And the sound! When I listen to it now on video, there’s a certain resonance and honesty to the sound – a clarity, but not a clarity like “oh, it’s so clear.” It’s more like the German “Ja klar!” or the English “Of course!” This piano doesn’t mess around. It’s not a piano that likes makeup, and you can’t really put makeup on it. It doesn’t allow for cheap tricks. I wouldn’t say it’s an easy instrument, but that’s great for me because I believe in neither makeup nor cheap tricks.

It’s really one of those pianos that you can just sit down and meditate on – that’s what I love. It’s a piano that I wish I had at home. In the end, the most intense joy I have is when I’m playing a good instrument like that. You just sit down and let it go – chill, relax, enjoy. No need to execute or fulfill any expectations. This instrument has that quality. It’s the perfect instrument. That’s the instrument I’m always looking for.

Just to conclude this question: You asked me about the reunion with the piano duo project – I would say this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship!

… Hopefully! With great pleasure!

What do you wish for the music industry in the future?

I wish the music industry would invest more time and resources into the younger generation – encouraging music in schools, inspiring young people, and supporting younger musicians in breaking free from preconceived formulas and false traditions. We should be encouraging the industry to take creative steps to make classical music more reachable, more accessible, and more approachable. That’s what I wish for the most: that the music industry will attempt, and hopefully succeed, in choosing the right ambassadors.

Those people in leather armchairs – the ones in positions of power – need to be chosen very carefully. I wish for more meritocracy. Musicians should be given the stage based on their talent and authenticity, and they should be shown as they truly are. Sometimes, I see friends of mine on CD covers, and I don’t recognize them at all because of too much makeup or photoshopping. That’s frightening!

Hyung-ki Joo, thank you for your time!