Anne-Marie McDermott

Music And Family Matters.

Sitting at the piano in the Chamber Music Society's Music of Our Time series, Anne-Marie McDermott purses her lips and glances furtively from the challenging score to her fellow musicians. Preparing to attack this avant-garde music, she is, ironically, a gamine from a silent movie -- Mary Pickford perhaps, or Paulette Godard; her devotion to contemporary composers is such that she will defy the Perils of Pauline to bring the piece across. As a child, Anne-Marie McDermott played music with her sisters Maureen and Kerry, both of whom became professional musicians as well. She made her Carnegie Hall debut at age 12, and after studying with Constance Keene and John Browning at the Manhattan School of Music she became a Young Concert Artist. She was the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant among many other honors. A guest soloist with numerous orchestras and festivals, Ms. McDermott is also a member of the Walden Horn Trio. She became an Artist Member of the Society in 1995. Her husband, Jeffrey Caswell, plays trombone in Broadway's The King and I. Ms. McDermott carries an awesome number of scores in her head; she performed 75 concerts during the Spring and Summer of 1996 alone. In March 1997, she made her debut with the New York Philharmonic unexpectedly, with only two days notice. These comments were made during a two-week period in which she performed music by Bennett, Brouwer, Clemente, Debussy, Dello Joio, Franck, Handel, Kreisler, Moravec, Prokofiev, Schubert, Shrude and Weir, among others.

"The amount of repertoire is truly insane! At this time of year I turn into an obsessive workaholic where I sit at the piano for 12 hours a day. Even returning phone calls becomes a major ordeal. Playing a New York recital program, it's easy to get into your own little world, and that can be dangerous. Chamber music balances things out. I adore solo playing but with chamber music you simply can't be so selfish; you have to listen to the people around you and there's constant communication.

"When I was five I wanted to push my sister off the piano bench and play myself. Something about the way the piano looked appealed to me. From a very young age I was power hungry and it seemed like a very powerful instrument. I remember going to a concert as a kid; this gorgeous big black instrument in the spotlight was just the ultimate. When I was ten I started taking piano lessons seriously and going to school just two hours a day. I ended up being rather unadept and immature socially and way backward in my teens. In retrospect I'm happy because your capacity for learning at that age is incredible, and you have your whole lifetime to make friends. When I was 18 I stopped studying because I was so loaded with knowledge that I hadn't had a chance to digest. My last teacher was John Browning, who was incredible. He and I did Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles four-hands at Chamber Music Northwest and at the Society. I never dreamt I'd play four hands with him!

"With chamber music you simply can't be selfish."

"I'm always playing or working on something by Bach. He makes me cry, and he makes me happier than anything. I'm also obsessed with the late Schubert Sonatas and all of his violin and piano repertoire. It's important to have pieces like that; when life is going crazy it reestablishes how in love I am with music. I'm addicted to solo piano music; my husband gets tired of it from time to time and then it's, 'Could you play something else, PLEASE!'

"Conductors are always asking for different concerti, and over the years I've developed a large repertoire. The only two I still dream of playing are the Prokofiev Third -- which I'm doing for the first time next week -- and the Bartók Third.

"I think I'll always get very nervous for the first rehearsal with a new conductor, even if it's a piece I've played a billion times. The process is a matter of coming to agreement on how to do things; compromise has to happen and it's a question of how far you are willing to give. My conscience will always be marred by an experience I had doing a Mozart piano concerto. At the end of the second movement cadenza there's a trill that leads to a beautiful, rich forte tutti. I try to make a gorgeous crescendo and hand it right over to the orchestra. The conductor felt strongly opposite, that I should come down and it should be a subito forte. It still bothers me that I did it his way. Dealing with pianos is another difficult issue. The first thing I want to do when I get off a plane is go play the piano so I know what I'm doing. When I was starting out, if a piano wasn't good it would upset me so much I'd start crying. Now I'll call Yamaha and say, I need a piano! I've had conductors say, I will not work with a Yamaha; how dare they -- it's not their choice to make!

"Bach makes me cry, and he makes me happier than anything."

"I adored Edoardo Mata, who died in a plane crash within the past year. There was such an incredibly strong connection between our ideas musically -- similar to how I feel about Ani Kavafian. When we work together it's like we're the same person. Making friendships with musicians through playing is the most intense and intimate thing. Last week I worked with the Borromeo String Quartet; going through that experience together is thrilling to me. It feels like family to have a whole body of very important people in your life who care about you and understand you.

"My sisters and I make one whole person. My mother died when we were 14, 15 and 16 years old, and the bond that developed between us has made a strong foundation for us all. Vacationing together is a sheer blast. We go to a cabin in the Adirondacks every September, and we take a cruise south for two weeks every Christmas. We play three half-hour concerts in two weeks and it's heaven on earth.

"It can be so disappointing if you love somebody as a performer but when you meet them they're not at all like what you expected. One of my goals is to be as sincere a performer as I can, so who I am as a performer is similar to who I am as a person.

"Every year that goes by I'm more in love with what I'm doing."

"I'm a ballet fanatic; I just worship dancers. For a long time I performed the Brahms Handel Variations for piano, and then I saw New York City Ballet do it with an orchestration. Seeing dancers flying all over the stage at the end of it gave me a humorous angle on the piece and forever changed my perception of it.

"It's incredibly relaxing to spend hours preparing a meal. My ideal days when I'm home are to practice until six, do my shopping and spend a couple of hours cooking -- mostly creative things to do with pasta. I'm big on making my own desserts: truffles, pies and brownies -- thick, gooey and chewy, with white chocolate in them. My performer side needs to have somebody rave and rave about them!

"My greatest desire is to be observant, aware and focussed at the piano. On concert days I'm practically religious about my nap, when I take a shower and when I dress -- and yet I'm never in the same state of mind; sometimes it's great and sometimes it's not. I'm trying to figure out how to become single-minded. Eastern philosophy has been very important to me. Zen is so calming and soothing; I might have flipped out long ago if I didn't do something to slow down.

"I thrive on being totally alone. I adore staying in hotels, being by myself, not going near a telephone and just having total peace and quiet. I'm a very melancholy person; I can still cry about my mother's death the way I did the day she died. Every year that goes by I'm more in love with what I'm doing and it makes me sad that I'm not going to get to every piece of music that I'll ever love. That's why I say yes to so many engagements. I love being a lunatic, so why not.

"I'm ecstatic to be a member of this organization. This is the absolute pinnacle of chamber music playing in this country, and for as long as David wants me to be here it's the one area in my music life that will have continuity. It's amazing to know that I will become more and more involved, and get to know my fellow musicians that much more intensely."

Ideal person to have dinner with tonight:

"I'd have dinner with my mother."