Violin Playing - What Matters Most
It’s all about beautiful sound, really.
This, my first post here, and most everything else about violin artistry that matters to me, is about beautiful sound. If it were not for the uniquely sumptuous, dazzlingly tender, endlessly complex tone a violin can produce, most any music a violin can play could more easily be reproduced artificially. But no other sound will ever equal the poignancy of Toscha Seidel’s recording of the Garden Scene from Korngold, Much Ado About Nothing, the sheer ravishing, pulsing luster of Kreisler’s double stops in Caprice Viennois, or the heartrending passion in Heifetz’s Sibelius Concerto second movement.
I remember exactly when my own passion for the sound of the violin was ignited. I wonder if others have experienced a similar, specific moment in their lives?
In 1973, while sitting shiva after the loss of our very dear grandfather, Julius Razovsky, our grandmother told me and my brother that, some time before, they had purchased tickets for us to hear a violinist playing with the St. Louis Symphony. The concert was that same evening. Even though out of the ordinary during shiva, our grandmother and parents insisted that we go. I had been taking violin lessons, and they wanted me to get to hear it. They felt it was something special.
My brother, Maurice, didn’t really want to go, and I don’t think I felt like it, either. But our family firmly insisted. So, we went. My brother drove us (I wasn’t old enough) and we somehow found ourselves sitting in some front row balcony seats. (By the way, my brother, Maurice, now a successful attorney, was and is a spectacularly talented musician – he’s genuinely gifted.)
I have no memory of what was first on the concert program, or what was after the intermission. What I remember, most vividly, was a charismatic violinist coming on stage, sitting down and being handed a violin. It was Itzhak Perlman. I’m sure they must have tuned, and I’m sure the orchestra played the short introduction. But I don’t remember that. What I will never forget is the radiant, brilliant, sound, like ringing sunlight, of Perlman playing the opening to Lalo, Symphonie Espagnole. And then he played high on the G string with such soaring intensity, and then he sang on the A string with a tenderness that I had never dreamed could exist. That moment and that sound still reverberates in my mind. The most beautiful sound I had ever heard. I have longed for and sought to recreate it, ever since.