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At that time was he already playing from the score?

Yes. We had a conversation once about why he, in those years, played from the score. He used to have absolute pitch, but as he got older he heard everything one tone higher. It used to trouble him enormously that he would play a note on the piano and hear something different. This was what made him play from the score in the end; he needed it as a reference. In any case, we began to rehearse, and felt—especially the first time round—that he was writing the piece as we went along, as if he was being programmed like a computer, as if his hands and head were being programmed. The first time we played it through he was searching in the score, especially at the slow passages, he was almost feeling his way around the keys. Then we played it a second time and a third time and umpteen times, because of course each time there was something he was unhappy about. We hardly spoke at all. Sometimes he would ask how we thought such-and-such should be played. He did not instruct and he did not direct the orchestra in any way, but his presence demanded tremendous concentration, discipline, order and unflagging attention from all of us. There was quite simply nothing to talk about. We just played and played and the orchestra somehow fused with him. We have never experienced anything even remotely comparable since.

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