January 25, 1980

NEW SOLIDARITY

Page 7

MUSIC: Vivian Freyre Zoakos

What's Wrong With Violinists Today?

'Why can't anyone play the violin anymore?" a long-time member of New
York's Philharmonic Orchestra wondered aloud during a conversation
recently with two members of the Humanist Academy's chamber ensemble.
The answer, he suggested, is that today's audiences are so ignorant of the
real questions of musical interpretation that violin-playing is judged more as
a spectator sport than as an art.
The Philharmonic member, a European-trained violinist who has been with
the New York orchestra for decades, explained that from his place in the
orchestra he has heard soloists of all varieties. "The clarinetists, flutists,
horn-playersthey may not be terribly musically sophisticated,'' he said,
'but intuitively, at least, they play musically. But the violinists!" And the
problem with today's well-known violinists, he added, is the problem of the
degeneration of musical culture, of audiences' understanding of what music
is.
He cited a recent concert in which Itzhak Perlman, one of the most celebrated younger violinists, played Beethoven's Violin Concerto. "Perlman

has tremendous technique; he'll get every double-stop, every difficult

passage note-perfect. And he has a big sound,'' the violinist said. "But his
playing reminded me of what they use to call chi-chi.' You know, someone
would take a completely mundane, ready-to-wear dress and stick some
vulgar ornament on the shoulder, to make it look cute.' That's what Perlman
doeshe plays along, and then every once in a while he'll do something
'cute.' "
Taking up his violin, the musician parodied Perlman's "interpretation "a
wildly arbitrary rubato here, an equally meaningless crescendo there. As
was clear from the score of the concerto, these tricks had nothing to do with
in fact, contradictedthe line's musical-harmonic development.
'Musical Morons'
"I think the reason that so many of today's violinists play like this is due to
the tremendous technical difficulty of the instrument. They're trained to be
first-rate technicians, but utter musical morons," he said.
"Especially with the emphasis today on contests and competitions, " he
added, "the most important thing for a young violinist now is to have great
nerves. It's as if violin-playing were a sport, like tennis. The guy who wins
is the Bjorn Borg type, the one who doesn't get nervous, doesn't make
mistakes. The fact that he doesn't know anything about what he's playing
doesn't matter."
The great violinists of the past, he recalled, didn't have the kind of flawless
technical precision that's demanded today. "Ysaye, the great French
violinist, usually made all kinds of mistakes, at least at the beginning of a
performance; Kreisler often was very stiff until he got going. But they were
concerned with doing something with the music."
"It comes down to the fact that audiences don't know what they're listening
to," he concluded. "Musicians figure their listeners don't know anything
but they can tell if the violinist's finger slips, or his bow wavers. So they
spend years working to get perfect technical mastery of the instrument, and
then don't have, and don't think they have to have, any idea of what to do
with it."