Interviews

Diana Cummings comes from a musical dynasty, and her career spans solo, chamber and orchestral playing. Since 1982 has been a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, where she also teaches on the LRAM diploma course, which she helped devise. She is also a professor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music. In this interview she gave me for the Summer 2016 issue of the European String Teachers Association magazine ARCO, she sha...

Stefan Popov has been professor of cello at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama for 40 years, and before that taught at Boston University and New England Conservatoire. He was born in Bulgaria, and studied at the Moscow Conservatoire with Sviatoslav Knushevitsky and Mstislav Rostropovich. In this interview for the Winter 2017 issue of the European String Teachers Association magazine Arco, he told me about the strengths...

Double bassist Thomas Martin studied with Roger Scott in Philadelphia and can trace a teaching pedigree that goes back to Bottesini. In a career that has combined both orchestral playing in the world’s top orchestras and teaching, he has taught at Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Royal College of Music, and is currently senior professor at Birmingham Conservatoire. In this interview, first published in the European String...

The charismatic, idealistic, often contrarian and utterly unique violinist is 95 years young today. In celebration, here is an interview I did with him to mark his 90th birthday, for The Strad’s August 2012 issue. The afternoon I spent with him in a Paris café, trying to get him to answer questions rather than turn them back into questions for me, create some intricate wordplay or go into a philosophical reverie, was one of th...

In this interview I did with Itzhak Perlman for The Strad’s Violin Heroes supplement in 2009, he remembered and analysed the violinists who had influenced him growing up, starting with – who else? – Jascha Heifetz. Like many people, I’m sure, as a child I listened obsessively to Perlman LPs, especially his Bruch G minor Concerto and his encore pieces, and I’m sure my love of the violin, as well as the ideal of sound and style...

Violinist Gilles Apap has one of the most original voices today, crossing easily between classical and folk styles, often in the same piece. But he found this voice himself – despite his teachers, rather than because of them – and recommends that young players do the same

It’s not easy being original in the world of classical music. Most of the music you play was composed hundreds of years ago and has been performed millio...

Regina Carter started with Dont and Galamian but she only truly found her voice when she discovered jazz. She tells Ariane Todes about the journey, and explains how the best way to learn jazz violin is to listen to horn players

‘Who says?’ exclaims Regina Carter. Perhaps my suggestion, to one of today’s finest jazz violinists, that the instrument doesn’t naturally suit the genre, is a little thoughtless. She laughs wholehearte...

Bartók’s quartets are often played ‘brutal, fast and loud’, but they should be approached as Classical masterpieces, says Jerusalem Quartet first violinist Alexander Pavlovsky

I recently interviewed Alexander Pavlovsky, first violinist of the Jerusalem Quartet, for the programme notes of the group’s next London concert. The players are performing Haydn’s Quartet in G major, op.77 no.1, Bartók no.6 and Dvořák’s ‘American’ a...

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates its 70th birthday in 2016 and for its commemorative anniversary booklet, I had the opportunity to interview Pinchas Zukerman, its Principal Guest Conductor. He was on fine and articulate form, and happy to talk beyond the RPO, about the current state of classical music and his optimism for the future. One of his key concepts was to create a global coalition for music education, cross...

Josef Gingold was born on 28 October, 1909. In celebration of the birth of a universally beloved and respected pedagogue, here is an interview I did with Joshua Bell, one of his most famous students, for The Strad Violin Heroes special edition. He goes on to discuss another violin hero, Jascha Heifetz

‘For me the most direct influence and by far the greatest hero was my teacher Josef Gingold. He was one of the most sincere and...