Preview

Cleveland Orchestra: a conversation

with violinist Nikolaj Znaider

By Mike Telin

On October 13, 14 and 15, acclaimed violinist Nikolaj Znaider returns to Severance Halll in performances of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 under the direction of Franz Wesler-Möst.

Mr. Znaider not only enjoys a celebrated career as a soloist and chamber musician, he is also a strong advocate for music in education, and speaks passionately about the necessity of music education for all. Mr. Znaider, is also an active conductor and this season was invited by Valery Gergiev to become Principal Guest Conductor of the Mariinsky Orchestra in St. Petersburg.

We reached Nikolaj Znaider at his hotel in Cleveland, where he had just arrived from Copenhagen. He was kind enough to have an extremely thoughtful conversation. We began by asking him how he started playing the violin.

Nikolaj Znaider: You know, the only way that anybody should start playing the violin or anything for that matter: simply because my parents thought that it should be part of my general education, no other reason. I don’t mean this is a presumptuous way, but it chose me, and I mean this in the sense that I don’t know what else I would do. It almost feels like it wasn’t even a choice, I had no alternative, it was what I had to do with my life. As I said, I don’t mean to sound presumptuous. Music is so important that if I would have to sweep the floor of the concert hall to spend my life in music, maybe that’s what I would be doing.

Mike Telin: I understand, and you don’t sound presumptuous at all. You're playing the Tchaikovsky concerto: how many times have you performed that piece?

NZ: I don’t know. I haven’t counted. I've played it a lot and obviously it’s one of those pieces that as a violinist you are aware of pretty much from the time you pick up the instrument. As soon as you start listening to the great violinists it’s one of those pieces that immediately catches your attention. It has extraordinary beauty, a variety of melody and obviously the virtuosity, which is very seductive for a young aspiring violinist. It is a piece that I have known for as long as I can remember.

MT: Is there anything that you do to keep the piece fresh?

NZ: One is tempted to think of it as something that exists already. I mean it doesn’t exist at all unless somebody sits down, in this case unless someone brings it into our physical world. It is only an idea with the famous black dots on the white page. Inevitably it becomes fresh each time. This is the way that I see music, period. But there is an element of keeping your mind and spirit fresh, but that comes not so much from what you do with, in this case the Tchaikovsky concerto, as what you do with everything else around you: the wider your horizon the fresher everything stays.

MT: You do a lot of educational activities I understand?

NZ: Yes I do.

MT: Are you still the director of the Nordic Music Academy?

NZ: That is sort of on hiatus because I am also doing a lot of conducting and it’s taking up most of my waking and sleeping moments. It is something that I am really looking at how to continue it because both education in music or music education or even music in education which is becoming increasingly starved, so this I something that interests me a lot because I find, and obviously music is what I love, but I do find that it has value to give to anybody regardless of whether they end up becoming a musician or not. The other thing is the way music is being taught, and I have had marvelous influences in my life and I feel that I would and I feel that I would be selfish if I kept it all to myself. So I have this wish to share what I have been given. So this is definitely something I will start again. It is something that I enjoyed immensely and learned from.

MT: You mentioned conducting. How or why did you begin to conduct?

NZ: For me everything comes out of necessity, it has to be something that I cannot not do if you will permit the double negative. I think I would explode if I didn’t conduct. But interesting that we are now coming back full circle, because it came from the time when I had to record the Beethoven violin concerto and I was thinking exactly the question you asked me: how do you keep it fresh and find new things in it? So what I did was, I bought a piano, and I bought the Beethoven piano sonatas. I also listened to the quartets a bit , and I bought all of the scores for the symphonies and began to study them. And it was this delving into music on a much broader scale than it was when I was just studying the violin. It was something that happened over several years, but it suddenly became very clear that it was something that I had to do with my life.

Published on ClevelandClassical.com October 11, 2011.

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