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Cover
Story
Photo by Thierry Cohen.
Vadim Repin Citizen of the World by Edith Eisler In the popular imagination, Siberia has always evoked visions of a vast, desolate area of ice, snow, and prison camps. No more. In recent years Siberia, like the Ukraine several decades earlier, has become a hotbed of astounding musical talents, especially violin prodigies. However, while the Ukrainian wunderkinder (such as Nathan Milstein and pianist Vladimir Horowitz) got most of their training in Moscow or St. Petersburg, the Siberian ones get it right at home in Novosibirsk. The sudden appearance of a succession of extraordinary players (including Maxim Vengerov and Anton Barachovsky) points to the presence of an extraordinary teacher, and indeed the arrival of Zakhar Bron at the Novosibirsk Conservatory has been a major factor in the discovery of Siberia’s treasure trove of violin talents. As his students’ careers have blossomed, so has his reputation; they have made one another famous. One of the most gifted, appealing, and arresting performers to emerge from Bron’s tutelage is Vadim Repin. Born in Novosibirsk in 1971, he began to take lessons with Bron at the age of seven and continued for 13 years. When Bron was offered a guest professorship in Lübeck, Germany, on condition that he bring along some of his students, Repin went with him. Though he started winning major competitions when he was only 11, Repin’s international reputation was established when he won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels at the age of 17. His career has flourished ever since, taking him all over the world to perform recitals, chamber music, and concertos with leading orchestras and conductors. His repertoire ranges from Classical to contemporary and he has a large, award-winning discography to his credit. Repin has visited New York many times as soloist with various American and European orchestras. From the first time I heard him, it was clear to me that he was an extraordinary player, and that impression has been confirmed and reinforced by each subsequent appearance as well as by his recordings. He has a spectacular technique, remarkable in its apparently limitless facility and infallible security, and a virtuoso’s natural flair without a virtuoso’s mannerisms or exaggerations. His tone is radiantly beautiful, warm, variable, and powerful, and unbroken by instrumental limitations such as changes of bow, string, or position. However, what is most captivating about his playing is his innate feeling for the music, his unerring sense of style, and his irresistible charm. His formidable technical resources are entirely at the service of the composer and he combines respect for the score with a strongly felt personal response to the music, from inward expressiveness to fiery, passionate abandon. At his most recent New York appearance with the St. Louis Orchestra under Hans Vonk in October, he seemed to have reached a new peak both violinistically and communicatively. His performance of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, with which he has long been closely associated, was riveting in its almost reckless technical brilliance and its intense emotional concentration. I had a chance to talk with him on one of his rare free days shortly after this concert. Unspoiled by his rapid early success, he is natural and unassuming and radiates as much charm in person as in his playing. In contrast to his severely dignified stage presence, his manner in private is relaxed and easy, full of humor and an almost palpable warmth. He discusses his chamber-music partners and other musicians with admiration and affection, and he talks about music with passionate seriousness—but when he speaks of himself and his thriving career, it is with a self-deprecating laugh and a twinkle in his eye. Widely traveled, he is a true cosmopolitan and is versed in several languages, having lived in Germany and then in Amsterdam after finishing his studies. For the last two years, he has made his home in Monaco on the French Riviera. How did you get started on the violin? I first started to be interested in musical toys when I was three. I always wanted a xylophone—anything with which to make music—and I found some melodies on it, songs that I knew or lullabies my mother had sung to me. When I was four, my father gave me my first real instrument, a small accordion. My mother decided I must have some talent and took me to the music school in my hometown when I was five. Not being a musician, she had no idea what I should study, but she thought I should continue with the accordion because I could already play it. But the class was full and, since I was so young, we were advised to try the violin. After six months, I won a competition for young children and played on stage for the first time. That’s when most students are still learning where to put their fingers. What did you play? I don’t know, some Vivaldi and some small pieces—it was just for children. The next year I won it again, and then, when I was seven, I started taking lessons with Professor Bron. He was my real teacher. I’ve wanted to know more about him for a long time. Is he the reason that so many fabulous fiddle players are suddenly coming out of Siberia? [Laughs.] Yes, one of the big reasons, I think. How did he find all these talented kids? Or did they find him? I don’t know; one can’t explain it. But I think it’s lucky for a student to have the opportunity to study with such a teacher, and also lucky for the teacher to have students who can learn and get results so quickly. Why and when did he go to Novosibirsk, of all places? He came about three or four years before I met him. He was very young, in his early 30s. He had an advanced degree from Moscow Conservatory, where people take their studies very seriously and perhaps get a better education than elsewhere. But I think it really makes little difference whether you go to a more or less prestigious school; how much you learn depends mostly on your own will. So I guess Bron came to Novosibirsk because he wanted to get far away from Moscow—which is sort of the center of musical life in Russia—and start something of his own, something new. Did he establish his own school? No, he taught in the conservatory, but he had his own class and worked in his own way. Does he use his own material? He used scales and études, Kreutzer, of course, and Dont. [Chuckles.] I think my first étude was Paganini’s No. 16, but he didn’t want me to know that it was Paganini and he only gave me the first part, so he wrote it down as an exercise. I was about eight years old then. No Sevcík? No, no Sevcík. Does he have a specific method? His method. . . . I think the most important part of it was his ability to explain as well as to show things. His way of teaching is very clear and precise, very pointed, very quick. Another important thing was that he gave his students opportunities to perform. He was forever organizing concerts for his class. That was very nice, because the most difficult part of teaching children is to get them to practice, not just to play and have fun. And you can’t perform if you aren’t prepared and haven’t learned your piece, so to play in a concert is a goal, an achievement. To study with him you had to work very hard; he was constantly pushing you. When I was about 11, I started taking real competitions. This was very important, because it was the only way of being noticed in Russia at that time, especially if you came from Siberia. So we went to Poland for the Wieniawski Competition, for young musicians up to age 19, I think. They gave me all the prizes they had. I remember I was extremely happy because I got all the money of the competition. [Laughs heartily.] I went shopping for the first time in my life, and I felt rich! And rewarded for all the hard work, too. How much did you practice? Well, by the time I was 14, things got more serious. Professor Bron kept pushing me to learn more difficult things, and he was right, it made a good balance. So I was practicing about five hours a day. I would learn something like Paganini’s "La Campanella" in five days and perform it on the sixth. Did you go to school? Yes, at first I went to normal school—I mean music school where they taught everything. But once I started traveling a lot I also had private teachers to help me study some subjects, for example mathematics and literature, in more detail and more quickly and seriously. I’ve often wondered whether the famous Russian school of violin playing, which was more or less started by Leopold Auer, is still being taught. I don’t know about a Russian school; I would rather say there is a strong Russian tradition. And the teaching tradition is a very important part of it. I know it’s being carried on by a lot of people who love teaching and are concentrating on it. There have always been great, great Russian violinists—Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh—but of course there are incredible musicians, and not-so-incredible musicians, everywhere, not only in Russia. But above all, music and violin playing are taken much more seriously in Russia than in Europe or America; people have a different attitude. In the old Soviet Union, music was a very prestigious profession and also one of the most lucrative. In Europe and America, a lot of children, and their parents—before they even begin to study music seriously or think of a musical career—worry if one can make a living at it. That was easier in Russia; I never had any doubt, any question of what I wanted to do with my life. The violin was very special for me, so I gave all my time, all my will to practicing and never looked back, or ahead. I never wondered, what will happen, how will I make it? For me, it was a dive-in situation. So you took the Queen Elisabeth Competition, diving into the biggest of them all. If not the biggest, certainly the hardest and longest, in terms of repertoire and duration. [Grins.] Yes, that was a big one, a painful one. It lasts 30 days, and you play three rounds. After the second round, they take you to a special house where you have six days to study a contemporary piece written especially for the contest. There is no way in the world you can guess anything about it, what it will be or could be like. The one I played was a concerto by a Belgian composer; I don’t remember his name. I was so happy to forget that piece. [Laughs.] I had nightmares about it for a long time afterwards. Did you ever play it again? No! What did winning this competition do for you and your career? I think it gave me a start and helped me to be noticed and invited to play in many places in Europe much sooner than would have been possible without it. It also helped me to gain self-discipline. You seem to have had plenty of self-discipline already. Yes, but this was different; there were so many new things. . . . It was the first time I had traveled and lived without my parents, so that was a big change for me. The next year, when I moved to Germany, my parents came with me. But Brussels is still one of the most special cities on this planet for me. Just spending almost two months there made me feel so alive! I have great memories of it and try to go back to Belgium as often as possible. As for my career—I think the prize gave it a certain push, but I’ve never paid any attention to developing my career, so I don’t really know what that means. I know what it means to play your instrument, to improve yourself, to improve the quality, the caliber of your partners, the people you work with, but the career itself is the result of many things, many people coming together. So I leave thinking about that to somebody else, to my managers perhaps; they know better than I what the prize did for my career. Did you get management through the prize or did you have a manager before? I already had one; we just continued as before, only faster and flying higher, so to speak. I had played in Europe many times before, on the Bavarian Radio in Munich, in West Berlin, which still existed at that time. I had even played in Carnegie Hall in New York in 1988. But you know, I did get one big thing out of winning the Brussels competition. I stayed in Germany for so many years because it was the only country that allowed me to live there permanently. With a Russian passport, it was very difficult to get residency anywhere in Europe, especially Western Europe. Having studied in Germany, I knew some people there and that made it easier. But after a few years, it became impossible to carry on the professional life I lead on a Russian document, because it turned out that every time I played a concert in another country, I needed a visa, and to get one I had to visit the consulate every time to apply for it. Since not every city has a consulate, I sometimes had to fly a long way just to get permission to enter the country. It was complete chaos. I had two engagement books: one for my concerts, the other for appointments at embassies and consulates. So I finally decided to appeal to the Belgian queen, Fabiola, and she was kind enough to give me Belgian citizenship. Since Belgium is part of the European Community, I have a European passport and can go anywhere without a visa and without a problem. You mean you are now a citizen of the world. Yes! Of course, having won the Brussels prize made it easier to approach the queen, but it was [the late violinist] Yehudi Menuhin who helped me to write the letter and explain the situation. How did you meet Menuhin? Aha! I met Menuhin because we had the same manager. At that time, I was no longer studying with Bron, and I had recently learned the Brahms Concerto and was supposed to play it in London and Germany. I was very nervous about it, so I asked the manager if Maestro Menuhin might listen to me for maybe 15 minutes and give me some advice before I performed it for the first time. He did, and then he was also the first one to whom I played the Beethoven Concerto, so he became a sort of mentor to me in the greatest concertos. And later we met again and started spending time and also playing together a lot. And then, in Vienna, we recorded three Mozart concertos with Menuhin conducting the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, an incredible orchestra. That was a big thing for me, also emotionally; I was very happy to work with him and had a great time. We just received a German award for that recording [the Echo Klassik Award of 1999, with Repin named Instrumentalist of the Year]. What other memorable collaborations have you had? Well, about half a year ago, I did a tour with [Mstislav] Rostropovich conducting, in Germany, and that was incredible. We played Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1— —which you have recorded, haven’t you? Yes, I recorded it with the Hallé Orchestra under Kent Nagano, but that was a few years ago and I play it quite differently now. Just from the way Rostropovich was conducting, I knew there were a lot of things in my playing that I wanted to improve. That was another big step forward for me, musically. And by the way, since then I’ve been playing the Finale in the original version. In every edition, the orchestra plays the main theme for about 24 bars, but Rostropovich brought me the manuscript, and in that the violin plays the main theme. Shostakovich changed it because Oistrakh, for whom it was written, begged him to give the soloist a bit of a rest after that huge cadenza—just 10 or 15 seconds, so he could relax and feel the blood flowing into his right hand again. But we decided to try and change it back, whatever the cost, and with training it is possible. In this concerto, you never get a rest, not from the first note; its tension and intensity are incredible. That certainly came through in the performance I heard. Tell me something about your chamber-music collaborations. Who are your partners? It varies. I really don’t want to establish my own chamber group, so I do most of my chamber-music playing at festivals, usually in the summer. There are dozens of festivals to choose from and they are all happy to have you come. Some are so special that I keep going back to them. One meets so many great artists there: [cellist] Mischa Maisky, [violist] Yuri Bashmet; last summer in Verbier we had, among others, [conductor and pianist] Jimmy Levine, [cellist] Lynn Harrell. When do you rehearse? We plan the programs beforehand and practice our parts, and when we get there we have three days to rehearse— —and fight. [Laughs.] More or less, yes. And there’s time to enjoy the concerts, our own and those of the others. It’s beautiful; I love playing chamber music, especially with such partners. I have a wonderful record of yours, Vadim Repin au Louvre. Was that the result of one of those festivals? Yes, it was recorded live during a concert series called Vadim Repin and His Friends at the Louvre in Paris, which has a beautiful new auditorium with very nice acoustics, perfect for chamber music. It seats about 600 or 700 people and has a big season. They gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted in five concerts during 11 days, so I invited my closest friends to play, have a good time in Paris, and celebrate the New Year together. And once we started rehearsing, we had an idea: why don’t we just record everything? So we put up a microphone and at the end we chose a few pieces, usually one from each concert, to put on the record. The concerts were completely sold out; 200 or 300 people had to be turned away. Do you have a regular pianist for your recitals? I have two pianists with whom I play a lot: Alexander Melnikov and Boris Berezovsky. Melnikov is a very good pianist and a fine artist with a very literate, serious attitude toward music. That’s very special and I respect it very much, because I also think one should start learning a piece by a close examination of the score, of what the composer wrote and what he meant. Of course you have your interpretation, and you can let the music go through your feelings, your emotions, your soul, or whatever you want to call it; but the basis, the foundation of it all, is the score. A lot of times you hear people play as if they were reproducing what they’ve heard just by ear, or from memory, without paying attention to what’s in the music. It may be passionate or beautiful, but it’s not right; in the end it can make the music awkward or unbalanced. And Berezovsky, too, is an extremely good pianist. We travel and work together a lot, and I’ve also recorded with him. We have a trio with [cellist] Dmitry Yablonsky; we made a recording of the Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich Trios, which also came out of a concert at the Louvre, and we are planning a concert at La Scala in Milan. We did a tour of Japan recently, combined with my orchestra and recital tour. We hadn’t played together for a while, and every time you meet again, each of you has changed and developed. But the basics remain the same. We know the program, and the most important thing in chamber music is to feel each other; then you can just make music together. Do you make cuts in the Finale of the Tchaikovsky Trio? [Hesitates.] Yes. Sometimes it might seem that, with the cuts, it loses its purpose as the final step, the summation of the piece. But then, if you play the whole movement, it just gets too long; there is no development, it merely repeats itself. And the Coda becomes more weighty with the cuts. I’ve tried playing it both ways, and I still prefer the cuts. This seems to be a very busy season for you. Yes, I’m playing concertos with all the best orchestras and maestros in this country, and recital programs and chamber music in Europe and the Far East, too. How many concerts a year do you play? I don’t know, close to 100—it’s a lot. It’s very difficult to create a balance over time. You have to plan two or three years ahead to have a perspective of what you are doing, but sometimes the more interesting offers come along later, because the budgets of some orchestras, as well as some festivals, are not settled until the last moment. By then you are already booked up, but you don’t want to turn down these invitations, because you like them and the projects are exciting. But you cannot cancel the engagements you’ve already accepted; that would not be polite. So you add more concerts and it gets to be too much. Do you ever get tired of traveling? [Pauses.] Yes, I do. Of course one gets tired. But it’s part of my life and I accept it, even if I’m not particularly happy when I’m very tired. So I take holidays and try to rest and restore myself, like these two days I’m taking off to spend in New York. Everything you do has its good and its negative side. I made my choice and I don’t regret it.
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