Introduction
Internationally renowned pianist Daniel Gortler speaks candidly about the realities of a performing life—its demands, its satisfactions, and its quiet costs. In this wide-ranging conversation, Gortler reflects on competition culture, recording versus live performance, the physical and psychological limits of practice, and what it means to persist in a profession that grows more difficult by the year.
Learning to Be “Normal”
Gortler’s early musical promise did not lead to a cloistered childhood. He resisted the stereotype of the isolated prodigy.
“I tried to be normal,” he said. “I was not one of those who sit eight hours on the piano and have no social life.”
Even now, his relationship with practice remains physically grounded. “I cannot sit for three hours on the piano,” he explained. “It’s very tiring—for the body and for my hands. I have to stop and come back.”
That balance came with social friction. Entering an arts-focused high school, he quickly learned that musical seriousness did not automatically confer social ease. “They threw my bag into the river,” he recalled with a laugh. “Enough with the good boy—you’re in an artistic school now.”
Education, Competitions, and Resistance
Gortler’s training took him from Israel to Europe, through major competitions and conservatories. Not all of it came easily.
He vividly recalled his resistance to competing in Germany. “I didn’t want to go,” he said. “For us, young Israelis in the 1980s, it was very awkward.” Yet he went—and succeeded—earning major prizes while completing his studies in Hannover.
That period established both his professional credentials and his ambivalence toward the competitive machinery of the field.
Choosing New York
Twelve years ago, Gortler faced a defining decision: remain in Israel or move permanently to the United States.
“I had to try,” he said simply. “I couldn’t stay in New York and still teach in Tel Aviv. I had to choose.”
After receiving a U.S. green card for extraordinary artistic ability, he taught briefly at NYU, then transitioned to private teaching. The realities of academic life in New York were sobering. “The teachers don’t leave,” he noted. “It’s also a matter of luck—right time, right place.”
Listening as a Musician
Despite a life saturated with sound, Gortler still listens—though differently than audiences might expect.
“There is no one day that I didn’t hear a piece of music,” he said. “But I won’t necessarily sit and listen to a Brahms symphony just to listen. I prefer to hear it live.”
When he does listen, it is purposeful: studying interpretations, comparing approaches, or discovering unfamiliar repertoire through recordings and streaming platforms.
Recording in Isolation
The COVID years became an unexpected creative incubator. With concert life suspended, Gortler immersed himself in repertoire he had long overlooked.
“I read music,” he said. “Scriabin, French repertoire, things I never touched before.” That exploration led him to Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, which became the basis for a major recording project.
“I was mesmerized by their beauty,” he said. “Because I had the time to get so deep into them, I felt I needed to record them.”
The Recording Process
For Gortler, recording is neither quick nor casual.
“A CD for me is a process of a year and a half,” he explained. “Then another half year until it’s out. It’s almost two years.”
He is acutely aware of diminishing returns in repeated takes. “Second take is good, third is really better,” he said. “Fourth starts to be worse. Fifth—I won’t improve anything anymore.”
He described the process as exacting, even exhausting. “The sound engineer almost lost his mind because of me,” he admitted. “I hear everything.”
Recording vs. Live Performance
Gortler draws a clear distinction between recorded and live music.
“A recording is like a package,” he said. “It’s clean, beautiful, impressive.” But it lacks something essential. “In live concerts, you can give something and the audience gets it. There’s a transformation of energy. That’s hard to do in a recording.”
The perfection of recordings, he suggested, can come at the cost of immediacy. “The recording is more sterile,” he said. “But it’s pleasant. They are two different things.”
Fear, Memory, and Control
Even at the highest level, performance anxiety remains real.
“I remember two concerts that were terrible,” Gortler said. One involved a sudden panic while performing Rachmaninoff. “I thought I was going to faint,” he recalled. “Everything collapsed in one second.”
More frightening than mistakes is the fear of mental drift. “When you start watching yourself from the outside, it’s the worst combination,” he said. “In music, you are either in it or you are not.”
His rule in moments of crisis is simple: “The most important thing is not to stop. Just navigate and breathe.”
A Profession Under Pressure
Asked to reflect on the state of the profession, Gortler did not soften his response.
“These are very difficult times,” he said. “The competition is impossible. The chances are less. There is less audience, less education, less budget.”
He described the life of a musician as increasingly precarious. “You are like a survivor in this field,” he said. “It’s becoming more difficult and more difficult.”
Yet despite the strain, he sees no alternative. “If people ask me what I would do if I don’t play—I have no answer,” he said. “I have nothing to replace it with.”
Conclusion
Daniel Gortler’s reflections offer neither romantic consolation nor easy solutions. Instead, they reveal a musician deeply committed to his art, acutely aware of its costs, and unwilling to pretend that the profession is anything but demanding. His candor underscores a larger truth: for many artists, music is not a career choice so much as an existential one—difficult, absorbing, and ultimately unavoidable.
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