Music And The Moment
Simon Moore in Fine Music Magazine (Sidney), July 2010: This month violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja returns to lead the Australian Chamber Orchestra in Barefoot Fiddler. Simon Moore talks to Patricia about working with the ACO and introducing Australian audiences to some of her favourite modern music.
‘You know, it is very strange – I actually never wanted to play the violin!’ That statement rolls off her tongue accompanied by an innocent giggle, but the thought of Moldovan-born Patricia Kopatchinskaja not sharing her extraordinary and unique talents on the instrument with us is not one that bears thinking about.
Despite a slew of enthusiastic reviews, plus a recent BBC Music magazine award under her belt, Patricia is quite modest about her abilities.
Returning to Australia for a second tour as guest director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, she looks back to her first stint in that role a few years ago. ‘I had never worked with an orchestra as a leader before. I was very curious, but also a little bit afraid if I could do it! Normally I just play! I didn’t know if I had the authority. How could I bring these people to make music in the way I understand?’ But her trepidation was very quickly put in its place. ‘I was so fascinated by the atmosphere in the rehearsals, and in their abilities. They were listening and they were curious, open-minded people. I became friends, we even cooked together!’
Her praise of the ACO doesn’t stop there. ‘It’s such an incredible orchestra. There is no comparable ensemble in Europe. Not only I say this, but also all my friends who know this orchestra. They say they are so happy to go to Australia to play with these people. They give absolutely everything. Really inspiring. They have an unlimited ability to really perform any kind of music.’
Patricia is using her time with the orchestra to introduce Australian audiences to some music with a special place in her affections. Her choice of program is centred around the Australian premiere of Tigran Mansurian’s Second Violin Concerto, ‘Four Serious Songs’, which was written for her. ‘It’s about death and life. And so much is said in the music! He wrote it after the death of his wife. It is very serious, but also very naïve music, like late Schubert. It is so extremely touching and moving that you can even cry from some notes he wrote. It is just one violin and strings, so he doesn’t need a lot of instruments to make a big impression.’
She continues to talk about the work, with an almost evangelistic fervour. ‘It’s one of the most important things for me in my life to show it to the world, and get [people] to understand that modern music is not something especially shocking or complicated, or just intellectual and not able to touch them. I think this is [seen to be] the problem with modern music. [But] Mansurian is very easy to understand and at the same time is not banal.’
I’m curious then as to how the rest of the program hangs off this work, and this leads us to Heinrich Schütz’s German Magnificat. ‘This music is also about life and death,’ Patricia explains. ‘He was about 80 years old, and he was out of fashion, so nobody played his music any more. He knew this piece would not be played in his lifetime, so he wrote it for himself and for God. It’s very beautiful music which was written for two choirs, but it can also be played for orchestra. For me, it’s very interesting as to how you play vocal music on string instruments. I think that in music there are many hidden words.’
But the program isn’t entirely about life and death, and Patricia will be performing two further violin concertos from the more familiar pens of Haydn and Vivaldi to act as a contrast to the Mansurian and Schütz works.
‘As Haydn said, life is so sad,’ she says. ‘I like to bring some happiness to people. I thought to play only serious and sad music, it would not be fair for the public, but also it would not be fair to ourselves! So we needed something for fun, so of course I thought about Vivaldi, and also Haydn.’
And Patricia is well aware that Australia is ‘girt by sea’. ‘To play Vivaldi’s Tempesta di Mare (The Storm at Sea) in Australia is something funny for me, because in Australia you have a lot of sea, much more than me!’ says Patricia, who lives in land-locked Switzerland. ‘My feelings would be much more hysterical, because I can’t even swim!’
I move on to ask about her first years as a musician. Despite her earlier protestations of about not wanting to play the instrument, she plays the violin as if it were an extension of her person. I ask whether she recalls picking up the instrument for the first time? ‘I don’t remember the very first moment,’ she says, ‘but my mother said that when they gave me the violin, I held it perfectly, and I even tried to do vibrato. I think because they took me with them many times when they played concerts. My parents were musicians in the old Soviet Union, they played folk music.’
And being immersed in music obviously paid off. ‘I was so much inside the music. During rehearsals and concerts, and even during recordings, I was in the studio as a small child, so for me it was the most natural thing to take the violin and to play it. And I see this with my daughter too. She saw me playing the violin, and when I gave her a small violin she just took it and tried to play.’
I was struck by her comments about her own performances which, whilst expressed quite innocently, show how a truly great musician operates as a performer.