a little ball of energy...
Yikes, again, this poor little hummingbird has been grossly neglected in the mad rush to get resonate up and running (new web magazine at AMC). It's been almost a month since I've posted - lame, lame lame! But the good news is: we launch next week! So hopefully the chaotic mess of my life will subside somewhat in the next few weeks and I will find the time to let this lil bird sing!
Despite the work overload, I've seen an enormously random mix of music gigs in the last month: the Liquid Architecture Festival (and all the 'offensiveness' that accompanied it!), Sydney Symphony (Mahler's 6th), Patricia Kopatchinskaja with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and just last weekend I even managed to get to a psytrance doof up past Newcastle...
I might record my thoughts about some of these gigs soon...
In the meantime, here is an interview I conducted with the little ball of energy that is Patricia Kopatchinskaja. She is currently touring with the ACO and this article was first published in 2MBS-FM 102.5 Fine Music magazine July 07.
Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja will make her Australian debut this year, touring with the Australian Chamber Orchestra from 30 June to 11 July. Danielle Carey talks to Patricia about her role as a live performer in today’s world of music on demand.
Thriving on the spontaneity and risk, Moldovian-born Patricia Kopatchinskaja is building a reputation for preferring live performance to CD recordings. For Patricia, a live performance is an organic life form that a CD cannot replicate – a dynamic existence that is truly unique. There is the thrill of hearing the unexpected, the danger of living on the edge, the challenge of maintaining perfect control of your instrument, the excitement of interacting with an audience. During my email exchange with her, she uses the analogy of museum replicas to elaborate this point: ‘Take insects or other animals,’ she writes. ‘You can kill them, stick them on a needle or stuff them, and [then] put them in a museum. You then can pretend that this is “the honeybee” or “the lion”, but these preparations have nothing to do with real animals. [There is] no movement, no danger, no sex, no surprise, no life. [It’s] just the same with recordings, they are dead insects.’
I find this idea fascinating – it seems to defy the commercialisation that is currently engulfing the arts. For Patricia, music isn’t a static product to be consumed; it is a dynamic interaction between the performer and the listener. It also has a specific social function – entertaining an audience is not nearly enough: ‘the performer has to be a guide, unfolding meaning, imagination and [the] emotion of a piece.
Patricia’s performances in Australia will surely be no exception. A quick glance at her website – where, incidentally, you can download tracks of previous performances – will show you that she does not compromise her ideals, but approaches her work with unrelenting integrity.
The program itself includes some politically driven pieces, bearing a strong message of hope against war: ‘I am just a musician [without] much knowledge about politics’, she writes. ‘But as a human being [with] the duty to maintain values…of course, I am – as every reasonable person on this world is – against war and violence.’
Written as a response to the World War II invasion of Prague, Karl Hartmann’s renowned Concerto Funèbre is one of the works she will perform. While most artists either fled the country or (reluctantly) joined the Nazi party, Hartmann chose to remain under Hitler’s regime as one of the few passive resistants to the atrocities that occurred.
His concerto is, however, not entirely pessimistic: ‘The Concerto Funèbre was written as a reaction to evil times,’ Patricia explains. ‘It contains conflict and violence, but also hope and faith. It’s really about the limits of human existence, which makes it a gripping and compelling piece – most worthwhile to present and to listen to. Having [chosen] Hartmann [for the program] we found it fitting to pair it with the work of a victim of these times – Gideon Klein [who was a composer in the Terezin concentration camp]… Some of the greatest musicians refused to cooperate with Nazi rule. Besides Hartmann, [there was] Adolf Busch, Pablo Casals, Arthur Grumiaux, [all of whom] we should admire and follow.’
New music also plays an important role in Patricia’s work as a performer. It has had a ‘radical influence on my way of experiencing and dealing with music,’ she states on her website. ‘Contemporary music is the air I breathe. Composers are the musicians I feel most at ease with. I like to try out, discuss and play new pieces, preferably while the ink is still wet and no “experts” or rigid traditions impede freedom.’
When I asked her about this passion for the new she wrote about the difficulties with performing contemporary music: ‘Somebody told me once [that] to compose in our time is like [selling] umbrellas in the Sahara,’ she wrote. ‘The public of classical concerts has acquired a routine in listening – they don't like to be aroused by new sounds.’ Along with this general feeling towards contemporary music, she believes there is still an attitude of elitism amongst concertgoers:’ It’s like visiting a museum where you know exactly what you are going to see and admire.’ And if new music is viewed as a threat or a risk to the pleasures of a ‘nice concert’, programming new music then becomes problematic: concert producers find they need to comply with this conservatism out of sheer financial necessity.
Of course it should be noted that Patricia adores older music as well – indeed, she will perform both Rossini’s String Sonata no 3 in C and Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D, ‘Il grosso mogul’, during her Australian tour. But as a performer, Patricia sees the importance of maintaining a balance between giving audiences exactly what they want to hear and challenging them with new music and so allowing the art form to evolve meaningfully: ‘We interpreters have to decide if we want to play this game or if we believe that this narrow classical world should be a real art form which has the duty to reflect life from all sides – not only its past forms, but also its current development.’
Given her interest in new music, it’s no surprise that Patricia also composes. She says it is the ‘best way to understand and to appreciate [the] music of other composers’. Mostly though, it is instinctual: ‘Why does a bird sing? It does not know. Perhaps it’s innate? I just feel better if I do it… Even if you can eat in fantastic restaurants, one sometimes feels the natural wish to try to cook...You suddenly realise: it's not a miracle – it contains raw materials and ingredients, which you [can] possibly even buy in a supermarket and [then] try yourself to copy [like a recipe] and put some personal note on it!’
During her tour with the ACO, Patricia will give the Australian premiere of Per Australia – a work she wrote specifically for this orchestra. Having never visited Australia until now, she says this work is largely inspired by the ‘
Working initially at the piano, Patricia allows her compositional process to evolve organically – first collecting ideas and then allowing the emerging work to diverge in many directions regardless of any original plans. While it is clear she loves this process, Patricia admits that it sometimes ‘lasts for months because my time is extremely limited [due to] playing about 100 concerts per year and having a small child at home.’
So what does Patricia hope to inspire in her listeners? ‘It’s impossible to put that in words,’ she says. ‘I seem to remember E.T.A. Hofmann, who said that music starts where the spoken word ends. However, I [do] hope to reach and touch them.’
