This content was created by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This content was uploaded by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This is a YouTube episode titled "🎧 #TPPSeason5Rewind | Episode 13: Nimrod Borenstein" (published 2025-07-27). The excerpt is an interview-style conversation featuring composer Nimrod Borenstein discussing his compositional philosophy and orchestration choices (e.g., writing novelty coming from notes and rhythm, an overture for Vladimir Ashkenazy, references to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, Beethoven’s Emperor/Schumann orchestration and a Mahler-like sound). A second speaker (the host/interviewer) interjects, clarifies who Ashkenazy is, and closes with a promo line for The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song.
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I think that one of the mistakes of— mistakes, it's difficult to say mistakes or not mistakes, but of a certain type of contemporary music in, let's say, 50 years ago, that is very, very old-fashioned, was to think that to write something new, it was enough to— let's say you wrote a new piece, you were a contemporary composer, if you wrote a piece for 12 trombones, 1 clarinet, and fine, and that will make you original. And I never believed in that. I thought it was just totally stupid and too simple, actually, that the, the real novelty should come from what the composer plays with, which are the notes and the rhythm. These are— and you need to be strong enough that that would be enough for you. And so It was a rational way of doing it. I always believed in that. And in a different way, I did the same with, in a bigger form for the orchestra. So a few years ago when I had Ashkenazy, I was writing a piece for him as a conductor. And he—
Ashkenazy as in The Ashkenazy, right? You're talking about Vladimir Ashkenazy. Yeah. I'm just saying, clarifying for my audience. Yes. It's a big, big name drop here.
Yes. No problems. So I'm writing for him an overture, and we were talking because it was for the Philharmonic Orchestra, and he had a concert in mind. And I said to him, so what are you performing on that day? And he said that I'm performing Tchaikovsky's Fifth, and I can't remember something else. And I said, you know what I'd like to do? I mean, I'm going to write a piece that's got the same orchestra as Tchaikovsky's Fifth. So that people can see that it's not about the orchestra, it's about what you write. So the orchestra will sound totally different with what I'm writing. And at the end of the day, because it was 2 years in advance, when we got closer to the time, he got fed up with Tchaikovsky's piece. He said, I conducted it so many times, let's change it. So it was— at the end, he played Walton first. But never mind. So, but to come back to The Piano Concerto, So my idea was it was going to be a concerto that was going to sound very, very big, but the orchestra is the one from Beethoven's Emperor, or you could— it's the same orchestration as Schumann also. Schumann and Beethoven's Emperor Concerto have got the same orchestration. So it's not a huge orchestra. And if you listen to my recording, you will see that it feels like it's a Mahlerian orchestra, but it's not. The power comes from something else.
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