A triple threat over four dates at the end of this month, Pinchas Zukerman will conduct the San Francisco Symphony while also performing in his most familiar role as violinist, in a mostly Mozart program, and on viola in Hindemith’s Trauermusik. Now 63, Zukerman was discovered as a 14-year-old in his native Israel by a visiting Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals, who helped transplant the talented youth to the Juilliard School in New York City, under the violin tutelage of Stern and Ivan Galamian. Zukerman started recording with Leonard Bernstein and Antal Dorati in 1969, took to the podium himself a year later with the English Chamber Orchestra, and has stayed active in the top echelon of classical artists since. From their base in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, Zukerman and his wife, cellist Amanda Forsyth, now perform locally and tour globally with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Zukerman ChamberPlayers. Zukerman also serves as artistic director of the Centre’s summer music institute and on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, teaching both in person and by state-of-the-art audiovisual hookups from Ottawa. His accent and syntax somewhat influenced by his Israeli roots, he somehow found plenty of time recently to chat with SFCV about his many musical and personal loves. We share the highlights of that conversation here.
It’s been warm here in California. What’s it like where you are, in Ontario?
There’s lots of snow right now; our first storm was a couple of days ago, and it’s about minus-15 degrees Celsius. But the sun is shining. We’re on a dead-end street, with lots of trees.
I’ve read that your house is unusual.
It’s an experimental idea, like two towers, basically, with about seven or eight floors.
How does the layout help you and Amanda do your music?
We have our own spaces, our own studios. Amanda’s is on the top floor; she has a dressing room and her cello, and I’m two levels below.
Do you practice together?
Yes, but not necessarily in the house. We usually rehearse where there’s a piano, and we have a location for that, closer to the downtown area. We decided not to have a piano in the house.
Is it special to have a mate in a chamber ensemble with you? Do you get to know her differently there?
That’s a great question. Does it help our communication? Of course it does! At times, out of nowhere, we’ll say, “Wait a minute, what was that phrase all about?” The other day I said, “I haven’t seen that smooth a bow change in a long, long time.” Once in a while she’ll say, “You know, that F sharp really stinks — why don’t you fix it.” [He giggles] Stuff like that. Other times she’ll say, “I miss your playing.”
Has your musical relationship changed and matured over time?
First of all, we do so many different things. She’s principal cello [of the National Arts Centre Orchestra], so that relationship, with me being on the [orchestra’s] podium, is already very complicated. Being the wife, I think she feels more of a burden, and she does express it, because Amanda’s a very out-in-your-face kind of person. ... Then we have the level where we both play as soloists, in the Brahms Double [Concerto] and other pieces, where we play with other conductors. We come as a unit, and that’s mostly helpful to conductors and orchestras. I think the most important element of maintaining any relationship in any circumstance is being truthful and honest. That’s hard, but it’s not as hard when you have a vehicle, which in our case is music.
Is Amanda coming with you to San Francisco?
Unfortunately not. She’s playing a recital in Edmonton. But there’ll be other occasions.
I was noticing in your discography one of your two Grammys, the CBS Masterworks recording in 1980 that included the Vivaldi Concerto for three violins, teaming you with Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman. Was that a fun relationship?
Oh, of course. [Giggles] First of all, in the Perlman case, I’ve known him since I was 10 [when they were both Israeli prodigies]. And I’ve known Stern since I was 9, so this was like family, like playing in your living room. But the occasion is what one should note, and that was Isaac’s 60th birthday. We all wanted to be part of that occasion, and the way we know how to express ourselves best is through our instruments, so we brought our fiddles along. We practiced alone, then we practiced with the orchestra [the New York Philharmonic, under Zubin Mehta]; there were changes and things we talked about, but there were many things going around at the rehearsals. It wasn’t just Vivaldi, there was Paganini and Tchaikovsky. It’s a camaraderie that happens very infrequently in the music profession, and in the old days I don’t think it quite materialized like it does today. I never think of Kreisler and Heifetz playing together, for example.
But what are the special things you noticed about the other violinists?
In Isaac’s case, it was the kind of extraordinary vibrancy, really in-your-face type of playing, that was so unique to him and his personality. And his honesty in producing the notes. In Itzhak’s case, it’s the ability, the sheer physical coordination. And his mastery — excuse the French — of the f-ing fingerboard is unbelievable. I mean, I’ve never seen anybody go up and down that fingerboard the way he has.
And Stern had been your mentor.
Yah, of course. But we became very much equals. He questioned so much of what he did and how he did it, over and over again, with practically every rehearsal and performance. I have to say, I learned a lot from him with respect to how I deal today with my own former students when we play together.
It’s been said that Galamian, at Juilliard, fused the Russian and French schools of violin playing in teaching you and other students, including Perlman.
There had been great masters like Ysaÿe and Sarasate and Spohr who all taught and wrote music, but he [Galamian] developed the understanding of how to create sound on this very complicated machine called the violin in a very simple way, simpler than anybody before. Basically: there’s the right hand, it’s called the bow arm, and it’s your lifeline to music. There are different methods, the Russian bow arm and the French bow arm, but that comes already in the music and its colors. A D-major chord is a totally different color than a D-minor chord, and the bow must be the translator of that to the ear. The bow division comes from a very complex and yet very simple method of catch-and-release: You catch the string and then you release it, to vibrate. That’s a very complicated set of thumb and fingers on the bow, which works very well, once you have it in your being. What Galamian created, over a 60- or 70-year period, was a method that explains that, in the simplest way. It doesn’t preclude the fact that we gotta practice it; it takes about two years for the left side of the brain to command the right hand’s ability and discipline to do that.
I’m curious, too, about your success in conveying this kind of thing over the Internet. Has that medium improved anything in violin pedagogy?
It enhances it; it’s not a substitute. The first time I saw the method, in 1993, I was taken by a colleague to see in New Jersey a company called CLI, which was doing high-end videoconferencing. We were given a demonstration from San Jose by a very nice young lady, an engineer. I saw print, audio, and video all functioning together. ... Then the lady said, “You don’t realize it, but you’re my hero! I used to play the violin till a few months ago, when I took this job.” Then she went out and brought in another guy, another fiddle-player-turned-engineer. I said, “In that case, you’re coming back tomorrow with your violins, ’cause I want to use this for teaching.” And I gave them a lesson. I tell you, it was a change the likes of which I have never had in my life!
And everybody was happy?
Well, they seemed to be reluctant at the start, because [the technology] was not invented for music, it was invented for speech. But we can use pictures, instead of language. I have two screens — one is the student, one is me — and I can say, “Let me play it for you, take a look at what I’m doing here.” At the Manhattan School, it goes onto their computer, and they can use it as a tool to see what the lesson was about. Looking at a performance, say at Davies Hall on a Thursday night, it could go out to 30,000 people or more, depending on the capability of their receiving the music, and why shouldn’t they? Some of them are handicapped, some not capable of leaving their environment to come to Davies Hall. It’s just a matter of time before we have finally a model created whereby the revenue possibilities are bottomless, where we’ll be able to look at our deficits and other problems we have, in museums and performing organizations and hospitals, as last year’s snow.
Have you been teaching yourself new things? What the newest thing you’ve learned?
Sibelius’ Second Symphony. Even though I’ve done it before, and I’ve given lessons on it, it didn’t quite occur to me that it has a direct quote from the violin concerto. It’s now in the system. [He hums the passage]
Your violin is an old friend.
I met my fiddle [a 1742 Guarneri del Gesù] in 1965, in New York, at the Wurlitzer shop, and when I put the bow to the string, it did something that was so amazing, in depth of sound, in sonority, in quality, in volume. It came up for sale, from Mrs. Dushkin [widow of Polish-American violinist Samuel Dushkin] in 1980, so I sold one I had, and a very good friend of mine helped me at the bank. It was an astronomical number for me — about $400,000 — but somehow I managed to do it.
But you’ve since had the chance to try out instruments costing many times that amount. If you were to lay out millions, would you get something you don’t now have?
Categorically, no! In fact, there’s a very nice instrument your [San Francisco Symphony] concertmaster [Alexander Barantschik] plays, which belonged to one of the greatest fiddle players [Jascha Heifetz], and I’ve tried it. It’s a wonderful instrument, but I’m still more comfortable with mine; my right hand just feels very comfortable applying the bow to the strings. There’s something in the DNA of the wood. You know, the viola I have is also a stroke of luck. The bottom and sides are by Andrea, and Andrea was Joseph Guarneri’s [aka Guarneri del Gesù] grandfather. The top of my viola is Filius [Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Guarneri], who was the father of my violin. So I’ve got 102 years of the same family. Can you believe that?
As a mentor to the next generation, with your hands literally on centuries of tradition, can you pronounce on the state of classical music?
[Romanian conductor] Sergiu Celibidache said something to me many years ago, sitting at lunch in Zurich. He’d just had his 10th or 11th rehearsal — it was amazing — and I was about to conduct Mozart’s 39th Symphony for the first time. ... He said, “Why are you so apprehensive? You know the whole piece.” I said, “Yeah, but it’s my first time.” He said: “Let me tell you something: Mediocrity is a poison. Stay away from it!” And I thought, Holy mackerel, what a good line! In the last 25 or 30 years of my existence in the profession, we’ve seen a growth of mediocrity that’s relentless. I hate it.
How do you account for it, Pinchas?
It beats the shit outta me. I don’t know. ... But I think you have to look at the evolution of performance music and education, because they go hand-in-hand. We have to bring back education, and we need to use technology, because it’s readily available and easily brought into homes. The economic downturn is creating major problems not only for nonprofits but for governments, and it’s almost like a tsunami through the arts. We cannot have that, because without art and music education, we’re a jungle.