Do meet your heroes
- atodes
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
INTERVIEW I had the chance to fangirl/interview my childhood violin hero Itzhak Perlman, and to ask him about his inimitable sound
I’ve interviewed Itzhak Perlman for the cover of November’s Strad magazine. I’ll say that again for 15-year-old me, trying not to shout: I interviewed Itzhak Perlman for the cover of this month’s Strad magazine! Yes, the awkward, odd teenager who was obsessed with Perlman and Thomas Hardy rather than Duran Duran and makeup, and practically wore out the family LPs of him playing Encores and Bruch, got to spend an hour with her childhood hero (albeit on Zoom). (He even featured in my school graduation yearbook page, below. And yes, I did fangirl him at the beginning of the interview, to which he was remarkably gracious.)
As I write this now, I’m listening to that Encores album for the first time in ages and it has brought me out in a great big grin all over again, reminding me why I love his playing so much. The warmth and depth of his sound, the clarity of his phrasing and musical conception, the consummate physical ease: all these can be explained technically. Harder to define: the charm, optimism, generosity, empathy, humanity and sheer love.
Perlman remains peerless among living violinists in these bon-bons, but to confine his reputation to salon music would do him a massive injustice. His discography across 45 years of recording spans 78 CDs in a new Warner Classics compilation and the quality of his performances is remarkably consistent, whether in Tchaikovsky, Kreisler, Paganini, Sibelius, Brahms, Berg or Bach.
And yes, I include his Bach. I love his Bach. There, I’ve said it. Because it makes me sad that his sound is regarded as unfashionable now – and by some, even untouchable, as if there is only one way to play Bach. Of course I know the many arguments about historical authenticity, but who’s to say that Bach wouldn’t have loved Perlman’s gloriously sustained phrases, juicy portamento, rich vibrato and propulsive energy and momentum – maybe even his harmonics – in the context of the overarching humanity of his musical vision.
It’s hard to think of any violinist under the age of 50 today who sounds anything like prime Perlman. Even with my favourite players, everything feels lighter, airier. Details may be clear, the tonal pallettes wide, but sometimes to the detriment of the overview or the sense of narrative line. If this style of playing might be characterised as brains and guts, Perlman represents heart and soul, and audiences around the world respond with love.
I asked Perlman about this change in sound fashion. He didn’t quite answer my question, but did explain that it’s hard to find distinctive players today and suggested this might be some sort of convergence in taste, due to the internet: ‘You listen to Heifetz and he had a sound, and then you listen to Milstein and he had a different one. And of course, there was the golden tone of Elman. They all used the same both grip, yet the individuality of the of the sound was so obvious. When you think about the great violinists from around 1930 to 1960 – Kreisler, Heifetz, Milstein, Oistrakh, Elman, Stern, Francescati, a couple of more – each one of these sounded different. You could tell by the recordings who is who, just by the way they played and the kind of sound they made. Today, the level of string playing is incredibly high. People play so well but sometimes I wonder whether it’s more difficult to guess who’s who. That may be because you have the internet and everybody hears what everybody else is doing. A lot of people have a tendency to play what is today’s sound. It’s all very good, but every now and then, you feel you want a little bit more individuality.’
I asked him how he helps his students search for this individuality and he was self-deprecating: ‘I don’t! All I can say is that I can help them think about what makes a phrase successful. What will make your sound a good sound? I don’t say ‘I’d like your sound to be gorgeous and sweet’ and so on. I don’t think I can teach that. You can teach the mechanics of what makes a good sound. The rest of it is what the individual student hears in their head, and also their approach to harmony.’
He concluded: ‘One of my old teachers believed that you could teach anything. But I think that that’s 99 per cent true. There’s 1 per cent you can’t teach. You can’t teach a certain kind of talent. The other thing that you can’t teach is tone, because it’s your own personal thing.’
So there is and will only ever be one Itzhak Perlman. And I suppose I’m okay with that.
Some quotes that I didn’t have space for:
On teaching
‘What makes a great teacher is not so much what you say as what you don’t say, and knowing when not to say it, especially when the kids are talented. Sometimes when you see a kid’s talent, you want to give them everything: ‘That’s not so good. That can be better.’ You can say, ‘Right now, it’s okay,’ and in a couple of years, they’ll get rid of that habit. You want to know what is age appropriate and what will develop later, rather than give everything at once. To be a good teacher you have to know what not to say.’
On sustaining a career
‘What can be better than to deal with music that I love? People ask me is, ‘What do you want to do next? What is your next challenge? What is the future?’ and so on. My challenge is not to be bored by what I do. Playing a sonata, chamber music music or concerto is an exciting experience. Every time you do it, it’s different. One of the things about live concerts is that every time it’s a special performance never to be repeated. I’m having a wonderful time, between teaching and playing and conducting every now and then. Each element supports the other, because it involves listening.’
On listening
‘The important thing is what kind of a listener you are. If you ask a player after a concert how it went, they usually answer depending on how they felt, because it’s a physical involvement. If you don’t feel so good, you are likely to say the concert didn’t go well. But if you listen to a recording of what you thought was great, it’s often not as good as you thought. And what you thought was not so good is not as bad as you thought. This is because you’re involved physically with the instrument. Your body gives you misinformation as to how you’re sounding. That’s why it’s really important to listen to what’s actually coming out.’
On dealing with nerves
‘I say to students that there’s no such thing as getting rid of nerves. It’s living with nerves. Know thy enemy. Try to use opportunities to play in situations that make you nervous. The more you do that, the more familiar you are with what nerves do to you and how they affect your playing. You’re teaching your body. You don’t want to be surprised and suddenly feel, ‘I’m so nervous, I don’t know what’s going to happen.’ You want to be familiar with it and the only way to do that is to try and use opportunities. Let’s say you play a piece that you’ve never played before in front of an audience. The first time is pretty nerve wracking. The second time is already a little bit better, because you know that you survived the first time. And then there’s a challenge of what you do the third time and the fourth time. What about the fifth time and the 10th time? Because it’s all about making the music spontaneous.’
On change
‘The way I play right now and 30 or 40 years ago is different. That was very good for what I did then. But if I listen to it today, I wouldn’t do it that way. I would do it differently. I think that I hear better now. I am able to hear where everything goes. Everything is more orderly in my brain as to how to construct phrases and so on.’
On the differences between Galamian and DeLay
‘Galamian’s main challenge as a teacher was to make sure that you sounded good. With Ms DeLay it was different. She believed in all of that, but she involved you. She would ask you what you thought of what you did. You had to participate more and not just follow orders. I wasn’t used to that. My teacher in Israel [Rivka Goldgart] and Galamian were similar because they just told you what to do. A lot of it was about practising what you want to do musically. Galamian would say, ‘Do this, do that.’ Miss DeLay was more gentle. I would practise more for Galamian than for Miss DeLay because I knew that if something was out of tune he would look at me and say, ‘That’s out of tune.’ With her, if something was out of tune she would say, ‘Now, sugar plum, what is your concept of G sharp? What does that mean?’ It would always be something more cerebral.
On teaching
I teach more like DeLay taught me. I involve the students in the process. Every time a student plays for me, I always say, ‘So, what did you think?’ They usually come up with some fantastic and mind blowing observations. And I say to them, ‘You don’t need me. You know this. This is exactly what you should be doing.’ It makes them think. That’s the important thing – it’s not just, ‘I’m just going to play and the teacher is going to tell me if it’s good or not good.’ You have to be involved in the process, which makes you a better musician.
I always say, ‘Do not miss an opportunity to teach yourself, to have students, to be a teacher,’ because that involves a different kind of listening, which is helpful for their for their own playing. I’ve been teaching for many years, and I find that it’s absolutely been helpful for my playing, without any doubt.’
The future of classical music
I see so many amazing talents, so my attitude is that the future is good. I’m also a firm believer in the audience. I think that when the audience hears something terrific, they know it. They don’t have to be professional musicians or players to know that something is special. I believe in the audience, so if the quality is there, I see only good things.
