Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2005
Sunday Calendar; Part E; Pg. 33
"String Theory, Stretched"
Violinists
Leonidas Kavakos (right) and John Holloway take progressive approaches, infusing their
playing with the fire of Gypsy folk music and the excitement of jazz
improvisation.
By Adam
Baer
In an
urban sprawl where the term "eclectic" brands the musical zeitgeist,
from the studios of KCRW to the multi-genre live performances that pepper
Southern California, a concert series centered on a progressive German record
label would still have been a welcome addition. Alas, ECM Records founder
Manfred Eicher and the UCLA Live staff could not agree on the content for a
proposed Royce Hall series — "Elective Affinities: An ECM Festival" —
and the series, scheduled for last month, was canceled in December.
The shows
were to have provided a foray into the distinctive blend of classical, jazz and
so-called "European new music" that ECM produces. Long a critical
success, the Munich-based company — known for its stark art-photo covers and
live, full acoustics — consistently presents seasoned innovators such as the
Hilliard Ensemble, Keith Jarrett and composer Arvo Pärt alongside adventurous
newcomers.
As luck
would love it, though, Angelenos can still hear a pair of ECM iconoclasts live
this week — the same night, in fact, but at different venues. On Tuesday, Greek
violinist Leonidas Kavakos will play the Sibelius Violin Concerto with
conductor Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra in Walt Disney Concert Hall.
And across town, at the Roosevelt Hotel, British Baroque fiddler John Holloway
will perform the music of Francesco Maria Veracini with cellist Jaap ter Linden
and harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen.
Though
not yet American household names, both musicians offer idiosyncratic yet
consistently enlightening interpretations. The problem is obvious: Hearing one
means forgoing the other...
The Gypsy
connection
An Athens native, grandson of a prominent
folk fiddler and currently principal guest artist with Austria's Camerata Salzburg, Kavakos, 37,
came to European prominence in the late 1980s after winning the Paganini,
Sibelius and Naumburg competitions. He didn't, however, pursue the life of an
international prodigy, performing one big concerto around the world each
successive year. Rather, he played concerts, as he put it during a recent
telephone call from Greece, only "when I felt I really
wanted to share" a new piece or program.
Which is
why American listeners are just starting to know him. "I never believed in
rocket-like careers," he said. "An artist has to develop and needs
time to do that. I let this evolution come gradually. I am in the right spot
now to play for people. I don't feel like I have to try to achieve or
pretend."
In much
the way Latvian violin paragon Gidon Kremer works with his own chamber
orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, Kavakos regularly skirts the traditional
soloist's life to collaborate with Camerata Salzburg as both programmer and
conductor. "I have a need for expansion and think the violin repertoire is
in certain ways limited," he said. "Working with an orchestra gives
me also the possibility to actively work on repertoire I love while helping my
growth as a violinist. The left hand helps the right one. It is not a career
move. It is a musical need, and the kind of work I can only gain from."
That
attitude led the young Kavakos to follow his 1991 Gramophone award for a BIS CD
of the Sibelius concerto by recording chamber music with the likes of edgy
violist Kim Kashkashian; the two teamed up to perform music by the Armenian
composer Tigran Mansurian for ECM last year. In 2003, his first solo ECM
record, pairing sonatas by Ravel and Enescu, won praise for its unabashed Gypsy
spirit.
Next
month, Kavakos will travel to Budapest with Simon Rattle and the Berlin
Philharmonic to perform Bartók's Second Violin Concerto. Later in the month, in Athens, he will debut John Tavener's
violin concerto "Mahashakti," which was written for him. He is also
celebrating the release of a Stravinsky/Bach CD that, he said, exemplifies the
principles for which his label stands.
"ECM
is about a complete recording experience," he said. "We discussed the
order of the works on this latest CD over and over because Manfred cares for
you to listen to it as an album, from start to finish." More important,
Kavakos said, Eicher has "an intuition" for finding exciting
repertoire combinations and ways to present his records. "He is the
definition of an artist," the violinist added. "I don't think there's
anyone more spontaneous, improvisational and willing to risk."
A willingness
to take risks also applies to Kavakos' folk roots, which he regularly honors
and which are likely to be fully audible during his Disney performance of
Sibelius' Gypsy-style warhorse with fiery Kirov maestro Gergiev. "Folk music
never gets to be sentimental, even if it's emotional, and that's one of my
principles," he said. "Folk musicians show us what one should be
onstage — one should always be spontaneous and invent — because folk music
describes moods more clearly than any other, and that's what a classical
musician should do all the time."
Baroque
with a jazz sensibility
Holloway,
for his part, wouldn't necessarily call the music he specializes in
"classical" — even if it has survived more wars. The 56-year-old
violinist, known for championing such previously uncelebrated composers of the
Baroque era as Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, is a bona fide pioneer of the
period-instrument movement. He initiated the first complete recording of
Handel's chamber music on authentic instruments in the late 1970s and
subsequently performed as concertmaster under such distinguished Baroque
conductors as Andrew Parrott and Roger Norrington.
Today he
teaches at the Dresden Hochschule für Musik in Germany and devotes himself to thematic
solo and chamber projects, such as the Veracini program he will play with his
partners at the Roosevelt. "The label for Italian Baroque music is 'beautiful melodies,
wildly virtuosic,' and the label for German is 'serious counterpoint,
intellectual,' " he said from his home in Dresden. "Veracini combines both.
His music is at the level of Bach's sonatas and partitas in terms of
violinistic demands and musical vision."
Unlike
many other period-instrument musicians, Holloway has a mysterious way of and
interest in turning fringe music into entertaining and enlightening experiences
for listeners who might not know their Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. "There
actually are people who want to hear something new," he said. "They
may have grown up with the standard repertoire. Or they may come from the jazz
or rock end, after hearing what some people can do with 17th century music and
becoming excited by the improvisational character and infectious rhythmic
drive.
"What
my modern-instrument colleagues do have to accept is that there is a kind of
listener who doesn't necessarily want giantism, massiveness and density all the
time," he continued. "They want more lightness of touch, light and
shade, more human scale. It's a known fact that performances of Mahler and
Wagner have been getting slower and bigger and thicker and louder for at least
100 years, and there comes a point where it just all gets a little bit too
significant."
Another
of Holloway's gripes about contemporary violin performance style is the
collective obsession with producing a long, loud "singing line."
"The word 'cantabile' means singing; in order to sing you have to breathe,
and in order to breathe you have to interrupt the line," he said.
"Nobody tells singers they can't breathe. But instrumentalists go to
endless trouble to produce a continuity of sound that no singer can accomplish.
We're being machines, and irrespective of Baroque performance style, it makes
me unwell.
"One
of the most disturbing things about violin playing over the past 100 years has
been the fear of silence. Yet it's the silences which define the sounds."
The
"jazz connection," or "sounding improvised," characterizes
Holloway's way with early music. That approach is especially helpful when he's
playing scores by a "classical" composer such as Veracini, who was
known for improvising on the spot. "We in 'classical music' tend to assume
that great jazz musicians or improvisers go onstage with empty brains and wait
for inspiration," he said. "This is nonsense. They practice. They
learn the great solos of their predecessors. They program the internal
computer. And in performance they hope that, in the inspiration of the moment,
good parts of what they have stored will come out in a funny order or different
shape.
"They've
prepared themselves. And I don't think we should forget that we have virtually
no chance of really knowing what in detail Veracini did with his own sonatas —
whether he played the text we have or whether he played something completely
different. Even though there are figures on the score that look like ornaments,
they're written down. I play those parts of the music like ornaments. It's the
decoration on the structure, not the structure itself."
Reached
in Munich, where he is producing a new
album, Eicher asserted that Kavakos and Holloway share eclectic though
tough-to-pinpoint traits despite the apparent genre chasm that separates them.
"When
we started the company in 1969, I recorded music that I wanted to listen to,
and since then the label has developed organically," he said. "I
don't like definitions that categorize music as 'classical,' 'jazz,' 'world.' I
just look for music that moves me."
Translation:
Whichever spontaneous "classical" ECM fiddler one chooses to catch
Tuesday night, it would probably be wise to leave the powdered wig and opera
glasses at home.
* * * *
Two
places at once
What: Kirov Orchestra of the Maryinksy
Theatre with Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Where:
Walt Disney Concert Hall,
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday
Price:
$15 to $125
Contact:
(323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.org
Also
What:
John Holloway, violin; Jaap ter Linden, gamba; Lars Ulrik Mortensen,
harpsichord
Where:
Roosevelt Hotel,
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday
Price:
$39 and $44
Contact:
(213) 477-2929 or www.dacamera.org
* * * *
The fiery
fiddlers: Selections
from the two violinists' discographies
Leonidas
Kavakos
Stravinsky/Bach.
Peter Nagy, piano (ECM)
Maurice
Ravel/George Enescu. Peter Nagy, piano (ECM)
Sibelius
Violin Concerto. Lahti Symphony; Osmo Vänskä, conductor (BIS)
Tigran
Mansurian: "Monodia." Kim Kashkashian, viola. The Hilliard Ensemble.
Münchener Kammerorchester; Christoph Poppen, conductor (ECM)
John
Holloway
Veracini
Sonatas. Jaap ter Linden, cello. Lars Ulrik Mortensen,
harpsichord (ECM)
Biber:
"Unam Ceylum." Aloysia Assenbaum, organ. Lars Ulrik Mortensen,
harpsichord (ECM)
Biber/Muffat:
"Der Turken Anmarsch." Aloysia Assenbaum, organ. Lars Ulrik
Mortensen, harpsichord (ECM)
Johann
Heinrich Schmelzer: "Unarum Fidium." Aloysia Assenbaum, organ. Lars
Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord (ECM)
