Grammy Award-winner Joshua Bell is a notable exception on the Louisville
Orchestra’s 2009-10 season. He is one of few soloists in a season
created to highlight the virtuosity of the orchestra’s own players.
Mr. Bell will perform Edouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole with music
director Jorge Mester and the Orchestra as part of the annual Fanfara
concert, which marks the unofficial opening of Louisville’s fall
arts season. The concert also includes music by Aaron Copland, Ottorino
Respighi and Richard Wagner as well as a beautiful – but underplayed – work
by Jacques Ibert, Escales (Ports of Call).
An exclusive Sony Classical artist known for his breadth and daring
choices of repertoire, Joshua Bell has created a varied catalogue of recordings.
Recent releases include Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; the sound tracks
for Defiance and Angels & Demons; Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto;
The Red Violin Concerto by John Corigliano; The Essential
Joshua Bell; Voice of the Violin; and Romance of the Violin,
which Billboard named the 2004 Classical CD of the Year. They also named
Bell the Classical Artist of the Year.
Bell’s list of honors includes the 2008 Academy of Achievement award
for exceptional accomplishment in the arts and the 2007 Avery Fisher Prize
for outstanding achievement and excellence in music. In 2009, he was honored
by Education Through Music for his dedication to sharing his love of classical
music with disadvantaged youth. He is the past recipient of the Grammy Award,
the Mercury Music Prize for the Maw concerto recording with Sir Roger Norrington
and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Germany’s Echo Klassik
for Sibelius/Goldmark concerto recording with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. He received the Gramophone Award for
his recording of the Barber and Walton violin concertos and Bloch’s Baal Shem. In 2000, his home state of Indiana named Bell an “Indiana
Living Legend,” an award given by the Indiana Historical Society to
a select group of Hoosiers for their significant contributions to the state
and society. In receiving this award, Bell became part of a group of distinguished
honorees that include Larry Bird, David Letterman, Senator Richard Lugar,
Jane Pauley, Kurt Vonnegut and John Wooden.
When he is not in the studio, Mr. Bell maintains a relentless performance
and teaching schedule that includes the occasional trip back to his alma
mater and a home-cooked meal. I spoke to him on his cell phone in August;
he had just returned from Switzerland and was driving himself to a rehearsal
of the Mendelssohn concerto in Saratoga Springs, New York.
SD: You grew up on an Indiana farm not far from Bloomington.
Do you still have family living in the area?
JB: Yes, I do. My two sisters and my mother still live
there. I have a house there, and I’m even teaching a little bit
at Indiana University in the Jacobs School of Music. I still feel quite
tied to the Midwest even though I have a place in New York where I spend
most of my time. Bloomington is not so far from Louisville, so my family
will come down to hear me at The Kentucky Center.
SD: Your life seems very busy and I would like to
talk about the impact that has on your decisions. Originally, you were going
to play Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy for the Fanfara concert. You changed
that in August and now you are scheduled to perform Lalo’s Symphonie
espagnole. What prompted that decision?
JB: It’s often hard to choose because these concerts
are scheduled sometimes two to three years ahead of time. So I don’t
always know two years later what else will be happening around the concert
or how I’m going to feel about the repertoire. Occasionally, one has
to adjust things at the last minute. I am performing the Lalo in Europe
and quite a lot of places in the same month, so it just made sense to me.
SD: These two pieces are not entirely dissimilar, are they?
JB: No – in Bruch’s case, he took Scottish
themes and made a fantasy out of it; in Lalo’s case, he took Spanish
themes to do the same thing. So both pieces are based on the same idea and
they are both very romantic, virtuosic pieces. The Lalo is the first major
violin concerto I learned when I was eleven years old. It has been one of
my favorites since I first heard the Heifetz recording when I was a kid.
It has incredibly beautiful melodies and is always a crowd-pleaser.
SD: You refer to it as a concerto, but Lalo calls it a
symphony…
JB:The piece is unusual because it has five movements – most
concertos have only three. This work has five shorter
vignettes and each has its own very
distinct flavor. It’s a lot of fun to play and a lot of fun for the
audience.
SD: Earlier you alluded to the idea that your relationship
to particular works changes over time, which leads me to ask about your
recordings. Last September you released your version of Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons. Later this month – September 29 to be exact – Joshua
Bell: At Home With Friends will be released by Sony Classical. Do ever listen
to your recordings and wish you could do them again?
JB: Oh gosh, yes. Once it’s out, I don’t really
listen to it very much. I hear it a lot when I’m editing and throughout
the production process. It’s aggravating during those times because
I wish I could go back in the studio and redo this or that bit. Recordings
are so permanent that it is frustrating. That is why I prefer live performances
in general. I love the idea of a one-time, live performance where what happens
happens.
SD: Tell me about this new recording. How did the idea
come about and what kind of repertoire have you included?
JB: Really this is something I have wanted to do for a
while. Over the years I have collected all kinds of musical friends, many
of them outside of the classical world. Recently I started fooling with
the idea of having house concerts, where I would invite different kinds
of musicians to my house with an audience of a
hundred or so to come into my home for an evening. Then I started thinking
of making an album along those lines, so we started making some calls. We
got a lot of different types of people together on this album, and it’s
unlike anything I’ve ever done before.
SD: You have some wonderful talent on this album: Sting,
Kristin Chenoweth….
JB:JB: Kristin is great; we’ve worked together many
times. As a matter of fact, she used to be my girlfriend at one time many
years ago. Edgar Meyer, the great bluegrass and classical double bass player,
with whom I went to school, is also on the album. We did a whole album
together called Short Trip Home. There are various people from my life – Anoushka
Shankar, the sitar player, and I worked together at a festival a few years
ago and her dad, Ravi, wrote us a piece to play. So I thought this would
finally be a place to put that. It was fun to throw all this mix together
with the violin as the common thread.
SD: It’s interesting that last year Edgar Meyer was
the featured soloist for the Fanfara concert.
JB: Oh, yeah? Cool.
SD: According to Jim Pegolotti, the librarian emeritus
at Western Connecticut State University, your Gibson Stradivarius (1713)
is one of the world’s great violins.
JB: Yes, I’ve owned other instruments by Stradivarius,
although never at the same time. This one almost went to a German industrialist’s
collection.
SD: There is a rather extensive history of the instrument
on your web site. I wonder if you could give us the thumbnail version?
JB: Sure, I’ll just give you the twentieth century
intrigue. During his lifetime (1644-1737), Antonio Stradivari made about
1,100 violins, violas and cellos. Of those, about 600 – mainly violins – are
extant. This particular instrument (The “Gibson” Stradivarius,
named for an
earlier owner) was owned by polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman (1882-1947),
who was performing at Carnegie Hall in February 1936. He also owned a Guarnerius
violin – a great instrument as well – that he was playing onstage
when the Stradivarius was taken from his
dressing room. It’s interesting that this was actually the second
time it had
happened. This same instrument was stolen from Huberman about twenty years
earlier in Vienna.
SD: Obviously, he got it back that time. How long did it
take?
JB: That time it was only a few weeks.
SD: How long did it take him to get it back the second
time?
JB: He never did. It disappeared for more than fifty years.
SD: Do you know who had it?
JB: That’s what the story on the web
page is all about. The short version is that in the early 1980s a man named
Altman showed up on the doorstep of a luthier (repairer of stringed instruments)
in Danbury, Connecticut. He had a violin that needed some minor repairs.
The luthier thought it looked like a Stradivarius but Altman claimed it
was only a copy. A few years later Altman was convicted of a crime and gave
the violin to the luthier, Ed Wicks, for safekeeping while he was in jail.
SD: So how did it come to be yours?
JB: Norbert Brainin bought it from Lloyd’s of London,
who had insured Huberman and became the owners when they paid the claim.
He let me play it once when we were performing together. It was a complete
fluke that I stopped at his office in London as he was getting ready to
sell. I told him I just had to have it…which, by the way, is a poor
negotiating strategy.
SD: So Julian Altman stole the violin all those years ago?
JB: Nobody knows. As I understand it, he never told
anyone the story of how it came into his hands – not even his wife.
Now they are both gone, so I suppose we will never know that detail. But,
for people who are interested in the history of the 1713 Gibson Stradivarius,
I recommend they look at the bio page of my web site.
SD:As I was poking around the internet I came across an
article by Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post (pub. 8/8/07)
about you playing in L’Enfant terminal in Washington, D.C.
(Note from the Editor: Scott is referring to an experiment by Gene Weingarten,
a Washington Post staff writer, that started out with the query: What would
occur, hypothetically, if one of the world’s great violinists performed
incognito before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people? Joshua
Bell agreed to perform
the experiment and showed up at a Washington metro station at 7:51 a.m.
one morning, dressed in jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap, and began to play.
For 43 minutes, he performed six classical pieces on his famously lush-sounding
Stradivarius violin. Over one thousand people passed by. For Weingarten’s
complete story of what happened during the experiment, entitled “Pearls
Before Breakfast,” Joshua Bell’s reactions and a blog of firestorm
reactions from readers, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html.
There, you can also see the video and hear the music from the entire performance.
It is also important to note here that Mr. Weingarten and The Washington
Post were awarded a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for this provocative
think-piece.)
JB: Yes, he wanted to do an essay on the context of music.
I would certainly not advocate that as a venue. In fact, the conclusion
of the piece is decidedly against trying to attract an audience from a bunch
of commuters trying to get to work in the morning! I have expanded my idea
of what I consider classical music. I’m playing a lot of Gershwin
and Bernstein, but I wouldn’t want anyone to confuse that story with
my efforts to expand the repertoire! I think a lot of musicians are doing
that, and I certainly enjoy it and learn a lot from playing with other types
of musicians.
SD: In a situation such as the one in Saratoga Springs,
or with the Louisville Orchestra in which you have only a few rehearsals
prior to the performance, how does the collaborative process work? For instance,
you have rehearsed the Lalo and have your ideas about the piece. What do
you do if the conductor has a very different interpretation?
JB: It does happen. Generally, conductors understand
that I am there to play one piece and they have the rest of the program.
I haven’t had any terrible fights, but that’s part of making
music – you have to fight for your ideas and sometimes compromise
or be diplomatic to find the best way to get done what you want to get done
without offending anybody. It does happen, but that’s also a learning
experience.
SD: Have you ever performed with Jorge Mester before?
JB:I’ve never worked with him as a
soloist before. I don’t know if he will
remember, but I did work with him when I was fifteen years old as a member
of the Aspen Music Festival Orchestra. But this will be the first time I
have worked with him as an adult – so I’m looking
forward to that.
Subscriptions for the Louisville Orchestra’s 2009-10 season are
still available at 502.587.8681. You will find complete program information
and subscription details for all six series at louisvilleorchestra.org.
For more information on Joshua Bell or his 1713 Gibson ex Huberman Stradivarius
and to order his music, go to joshuabell.com.