If you check Microsoft's
online Encarta encyclopedia, you'll learn that "Novosibirsk,
formerly Novonikolayevsk . . . is the largest city and one of the chief
industrial centers of Siberia. . . . It is the seat of a university and
a scientific research center, and has opera and ballet companies."
It is also the birthplace
of the latest and greatest Russian violinist, Maxim Vengerov.
That Vengerov (and his rival
Vadim Repin, for that matter) comes from Siberia, where the snow and
ice are no joke, would have been a good straight line for borscht-belt
comics 50 years ago when the famous Russian violinists came from more
traditional bastions of culture: Heifetz from Vilna, Milstein and Oistrakh
from Odessa, Kogan from Dnepropetrovsk (like Odessa, a large city in
Ukraine).
It's no joke now.
During a conversation with
Vengerov, while the 29-year old virtuoso is in Chicago on another one
of his seemingly perpetual series of tours, he tells me unequivocally
that Novosibirsk is not only the center of Russian culture, but that
it is "the most intelligent Russian city." During World War
II, many industries and the most brilliant scientists were moved there
as a safety precaution; to keep the scientists and their families happy,
the government made sure there was culture, and lots of it, including
art, ballet, the theater and, of course, music.
"Musical life in Novosibirsk
was very rich," Vengerov says. "When I was still in Mom's
womb, I heard David Oistrakh give one of his very last concerts in Russia,
playing the Tchaikovsky concerto."
Vengerov calls Oistrakh
one of his heroes. "He had the ability to be one with the instrument,"
he explains, "to play with such incredible nobility."
It sounds like a description
of the way the romantically dark-eyed Vengerov plays. Despite a publicity
machine that emphasizes his appeal to Gen X and beyond (www.maximvengerov.org,
a website created by adoring fans, is liberally laced with beefcake
publicity photos and gushing emails), the reflective character of his
technically spectacular performances is surprisingly authentic and moving.
This was already true when
he burst onto the music scene 15 years ago, as you can hear on a 1989
recital reissued by newly relaunched Biddulph Recordings. The 73-minute
recital, headlined by Schubert's C Major Fantasy, shows the then-teen
to be in supreme command not only of his technique but of his elegant
music making. Equally impressive, as he has gone on to do consistently
in his recording career, he inspires the musicians around him (in this
case, pianist Irina Vinogradova) to play to his level.
You can hear it as well
on his 1996 recording of the Sibelius concerto with Daniel Barenboim
conducting the Chicago Symphony, and in his new EMI Classics release
of French music, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Antonio
Pappano. On that recording, Vengerov plays with such an unusual combination
of Gallic splash and musical respect that French critics are calling
his interpretations landmarks that elevate Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole
and Saint-Saëns' Third Concerto to the level of the great German
concertos.
Like many young classical
superstars, Vengerov leads a peripatetic life. "I divide my time
into different activities," he says, "teaching, touring, making
recordings, and traveling." Aside from teaching one week each month
at the Musikhochschule des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, "I'm
like a gypsy," he says.
After playing Lalo with
Barenboim in Chicago, he is off to Vienna to play chamber music with
his great friend Mstislav Rostropovich. The bond between Vengerov and
the great cellist runs very deep.
"Rostropovich is one
of my mentors," he says. "He's like a grandfather to me. He
has supported me throughout my development, ever since I played for
him when I was 17. His personality is very difficult to put into any
frame. He doesn't limit himself to being a fantastic cellist, he's also
an incredible musician, and an inspiring friend. When he agreed to record
Shostakovich's First Concerto with me [for the Teldec label in 1995,
later selected as Record of the Year by Gramophone magazine],
I had to make my own way to Evian in France. It was quite difficult
to get there from where I was and when I arrived, he said in an encouraging
fashion, 'Well, my dear, I've heard you are so talented, you have come
such a long way, if you really want to learn from me, we really have
to make a recording of the century.'
"He has broadened my
views of music and introduced me to composers like Shostakovich and
Prokofiev as if they were still alive and I was actually meeting them."
During the summer of 2003,
Vengerov spent a month in Rostropovich's apartment in Moscow. "I
really enjoyed my time there," he says, "It was quite remarkable
to see how Russia is developing. Positively so," he adds, "although
there is so much change, and there is still poverty."
Asked if music had the same
place it did in the Moscow of the '50s and '60s, when musicians
like Shostakovich, Kogan, Oistrakh, Gilels, and Rostropovich were working
and teaching, Vengerov observes, "Unfortunately not. It is a time
of crisis and many musicians have left. But because the world has opened
up, musicians like Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Olga Borodina, and Rostropovich
can maintain residences in Moscow."
Part of what makes Vengerov
such an intriguing musician is his interest in the viola—"I
love the deeper voice of the viola," he says, "its different
colors, the way I can dig into the lower strings"—and his
desire to play on violins other than his famous Strad.
His 2002 recital of Bach,
Shchedrin, and Ysaÿe for EMI Classics, for example, demonstrates
the astounding range of colors that a great modern violinist can create
by working on a range of instruments. It shows Vengerov achieving his
wizardry not only on the Kreutzer Stradivari (which should probably
be called a modern instrument because it has been reworked to play at
modern pitch), but also, for Rodion Shchedrin's arrangement of Bach's
D Minor Toccata and Fugue, on an 18th-century fiddle by Carlo Landolfi
restored by Nahum Tukh to its original Baroque specifications.
Equally impressive is his
commitment to an increasingly wide musical palette. In Shchedrin's 15-minute
Echo Sonata (on the same CD), which was composed in 1985 for the tercentenary
of Bach's birth, Vengerov moves from the extroverted, almost schizophrenic
mood of Ysaÿe's Sixth Sonata ("miraculous," a violinist
friend told me) to a deeply reflective reverie that shows Vengerov,
almost in denial of the music's dramatic stance, playing more and more
within himself. The recording ends with an encore, Shchedrin's delightful
Balalaika, taken from a live London concert, played entirely pizzicato.
Very excellent!
Vengerov had been planning
to take a sabbatical of sorts this year, but his schedule already includes
a spate of performances of the three Brahms sonatas with pianist Fazil
Say, including his first appearance, on March 3, at the new Walt Disney
Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and a number of performances of the Walton
viola concerto. Recording projects for the year include the Brahms sonatas
and, "hopefully," a new viola concerto by "a wonderful
composer" named Benjamin Yusupov, a 42-year-old Tajikistani now
living in Israel. Yusupov employs Western and Eastern musical traditions
with exhilarating freedom either using exotic instruments or conjuring
up an illusion of their sounds with conventional instruments. Yusupov
has already dedicated a violin concerto to Vengerov and a set of songs
to Vengerov and mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli.
In his sabbatical, now rescheduled
for 2005, Vengerov plans to study improvisation. "You need free
time for that," he explains. "It will be like learning a new
musical language, allowing me to express myself fully." His interest
in improvisation stems, in part, from the third movement of the viola
concerto he commissioned from Yusupov, which calls for the soloist "to
improvise in rock style."
Characteristically impatient,
Vengerov is eager to get to 2005—and show the audience what he
has done during his sabbatical. At the end of the Yusupov concerto,
he says with glee,
"there is a tango that I will have to dance with a partner"
(apparently, this means touring with a dancing partner, which may be
a first for a classical violinist). Although Vengerov loves to dance,
he admits, "I will first have to learn the tango."
Asked if he intends to improvise
cadenzas for the mainstream classical concertos, Vengerov says, "Yes,
that's my goal, to recreate this wonderful tradition and follow
my greatest heroes, like Paganini, Liszt, and Schubert, to improvise
on stage. I am writing out cadenzas for those concertos already."
You can hear an example
of Vengerov's interest in improvised cadenzas on his CD of the
Brahms violin concerto, recorded live in Chicago in 1997.
This urge to express his
personality is not new. When, at the age of five, he was first taken
to meet the famous teacher Galina Tourchaninova in Moscow, she looked
at his hands and said, "Oh, that's lovely, you have big hands.
Maybe you should be a cellist." When she continued, "Do you
have strength in these hands?" Vengerov punched her in the stomach
as hard as he could—"which was actually quite hard,"
he admits. "Fortunately, she was in a good mood that day, and she
accepted me as a student."
As with his hero Oistrakh
who, "as the years passed, improved and matured," Vengerov
is showing that he has just begun to learn how to use his technique
and hypnotically centered, luminous tone to illuminate the emotional
dimensions of every note he plays. As he lets himself become more susceptible
to the tonal beauty of his instruments, he will continue to transcend
conventional interpretive considerations. He can already speak above
orchestras. What is left is to find his own unique voice.
It's all pretty hot
stuff for a boy from Siberia.
What
Vengerov Plays
Vengerov made news on the
financial front in 1998 when Yoko Nagae Ceschina made possible his purchase
through Christie's in London of the splendid Kreutzer Strad of 1727
for more than $1.5 million, still the highest price ever paid for a
Stradivari at auction. Despite the record price, The Economist
reported that "there are some who argue that Mr. Vengerov got a
bargain. Other Strads have recently been sold (privately) for between
$2.5 million and $3.5 million," adding that the Lady Blunt Strad,
according to London dealer Charles Beare, "could fetch as much
as $4.5 million."
In line with his interest
in violins and their evolution, Vengerov says that if he could go back
and hear any famous violinist of the past, "My dream would be to
hear Paganini—it's every violinist's dream. It's difficult to hear
how he was playing, but considering how difficult he wrote, he must
have been an OK violinist. And take Corelli," he says, as if thinking
to himself, "people have been battling against the sostenuto sound,
saying that in Baroque music notes had to be released after each tone,
but that was argued before we could read letters of Corelli and their
advice that violinists should try to sustain the sound."
Vengerov has many bows for
the Kreutzer, depending on the repertoire on that day. But mostly he
prefers to talk about contemporary makers. "It's interesting what's
going on with them,"
he says, singling out Samuel Zygmuntowicz in Brooklyn (from whom Isaac
Stern bought instruments, as have violinist Philip Setzer and cellist
David Finckel of the Emerson Quartet.) "[He] has made quite wonderful
instruments," says Vengerov, who has ordered a viola from the New
York luthier.
Photo of Maxim Vengerov
by David Thompson
