When music and literature meet:Nava Semel's novel "Screwed on Backwards"

Music and the power of art in human survival are at the heart of Nava Semel’s recently published novel “Screwed on Backwards” (2011, Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan). The novel comprises two narrative sections. One story takes place in the 1930s in a northern Italian village in Piemonte under German occupation. Three people live in a remote farmhouse – an elderly mother, her opera singer daughter Madalena and Tomaso, a six-year-old foundling they have taken in from an orphanage in Turin. Then there is a school teacher, an ardent Fascist, who is in love with Madalena, and a young Wehrmacht soldier, a Nazi who also falls in love with the beautiful young singer. On the farm, there is a neglected barn considered out-of-bounds; of course, this outbuilding allures the child, firing his imagination. One day, Tomaso senses the presence of another person there and fantasizes that the attic is inhabited by a captive princess. He begins to attach notes and small gifts to a rope for the princess, his offerings disappearing by the following day. This “interaction” becomes Tomaso’s private world into which he retreats. But, as the book’s title conveys, he is not, for some physical- or emotional reason, a child who is accepted among those around him and his imaginary world might put the family in danger.

Parallel to this story, another sequence of events unfolds in an intensive care unit of a hospital in Israel, where a nurse is sitting by a comatose man. His identity is a mystery to her, but he has a manuscript with him, in which the above story is told. The nurse spends nights reading aloud from the shabby pages in the hope that the patient will awaken and identify himself; is he one of the people involved in the events of wartime Italy? Who is her patient and where does he fit into the puzzle?

The second part of the book is narrated in a more poetic style by the man who is now comatose – a Jewish musician and Madalena’s lover. Madalena, the young woman had taken music lessons from this Jewish maestro and, when war broke out, the orphanage was a place to hide their illegitimate child. Tomaso’s daily interaction with his imaginary princess is, in effect, with his own father whom he has never met.

References to musical- and non-musical sounds are thread into the fabric of the text throughout, some factual and realistic, others poetic and figuratively woven into the memory strata of the book. ‘The most beautiful sound to Tomaso’s ears was that of the opening of the buds of the rose bush’ (p.114). In the first part of the book, mention is made of the fine quality of Madalena’s singing voice and of Tomaso’s liking for Verdi’s opera “Aida”: ‘When Madalena sings, Tomaso forgets everything… The young boy especially liked the story of “Aida”, the foreign princess who had been taken prisoner in Egypt…’ (p.34) Horrified to learn of the tragic fate of the lovers in Aida, Tomaso decides that Verdi was especially “screwed on backwards”, but instead of feeling a sense of fraternity towards him, in fact, a dislike of him welled up within him’ (p.50). And music belongs to the parallel story. In the chapter titled “Hushed Song”, there is discussion on whether to play the comatose person rock ‘n roll or trance music or the “Lacrimosa” from the Mozart Requiem together with the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. ‘This young nurse is, indeed, devoid of all musical aptitude, but she is certainly able to play her patient a hushed song’ (p.36) ‘The nurse drums on the patient’s arm…increasing the drumming, matching the rhythm to the pulse – her pulse’ (p.63).
Semel’s returning to Verdi’s “Aida” again and again, and on different levels, constitutes an important connection between the book’s characters. ‘He thrust into my hand a worn music notebook which he had pulled out from the drawer of his table, urging me to open it. This was the original score of “Aida”, as written in Verdi’s own hand, and his most precious treasure’ (p.183).

On May 13th 2012, Nava Semel and I met and talked. I was interested to hear more about the musical element that prevails supreme throughout the pages of “Screwed on Backwards”.

PH: Let’s start with the story. How did it originate?

Nava Semel: Six years ago, I was on a lecture tour in Italy. I was invited to give a lecture in memory of Primo Levi at the Fossoli Camp, a concentration camp where Italian Jews arrested by the Nazis were taken before being sent to extermination camps. I was feeling very emotional talking about the Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi and this was Human Rights Day. Resulting from that event, I was sent to Piemonte to give more talks. My interpreter was a very pleasant young Catholic woman who had a liking for Hebrew songs. As we drove along the highways of Piemonte, I taught her some Hebrew songs. We made a detour to the small village where she had grown up; she wanted to pay her mother a short visit. While she was with her mother, I went for a walk around the picturesque village, with its prominent chimneys and tiled roofs – it was a romantic, pastoral spot from which one could see the snow of the Alps. When looking at one of the sloping roofs, I imagined a film. In my mind’s eye, I saw a person lying below one of the sloped roofs there peeping out at me through a crack. It was like a flash of lightening in my mind. When my interpreter Maria Theresa returned, I asked her what really had happened in this village; she immediately understood what was behind my questioning and answered that Jews had been saved there. My gut feeling was that a story had awaited me in that village, presenting itself as I was wandering around there; it was as if it were waiting for someone through whom it could be told. That very night, I heard the opening words of the book; I heard six-year-old Tomaso saying “There is a principessa (Italian: princess) there…”

PH: How did the element of music find its way into the book?

NS: Music very quickly became part of the fabric of the novel. I began hearing sounds and voices. The moment it was “revealed’ to me that Madalena was an opera singer, I began hearing Verdi’s music to “Aida”. The story was given a kind of orchestration in my mind (as well as in the minds of some of my readers). And, of course, in the second part of the book, I literally began to hear the work Salomone Levi was composing. From writing the book, I am changed person when it comes to musical awareness….I hear so many more of the sounds around and within me.

PH: What is the significance of names you chose for the characters?

NS: I was not aware of it at the time, but I do, indeed, pay homage to two people here – one is Primo Levi and the other, the Italian Jewish composer Salomone Rossi. The choice was a subconscious choice at the time! I should add that the Levi tribe, one of the twelve, was a tribe of instrumentalists. David and Solomon were both musicians whose artistry has been of great inspiration for me: King Solomon wrote the most romantic book, “Song of Songs” and King David, the Psalms, the most desperate of books. My book “Screwed on Backwards” gravitates between two poles – love and despair. The love between Salomone and Madalena was inconceivable in those times: as of 1938, the union between Christians and Jews was forbidden, not to speak of parenting a child together.

PH: This is definitely the story of love.

NS: Yes. The book focuses on what a person is willing to go through for love. Throughout the story, Madalena comes up against endless obstacles for her love. I feel the need to apologize to her for what I have put her through. I salute her for what she was willing to do for her lover: she lost her child, she lost her reputation, she was considered a prostitute for the Germans, and as if that were not enough, she had to have a German living in the house and to carry on intimate relations with him.

PH: How does this love and suffering connect to music?

NS: The music is consolation, despite the fact that Madalena will never be able to sing again; neither will she find comfort in “Aida”. But “Aida” is Tomaso’s consolation, and it is also, paradoxically, a consolation for Hans Dieter, the German soldier. And “Aida” is surely the source of Salomone Levi’s survival, for whom the padre has left pages in the attic where the musician is hidden, even ruling up pages for him with music staves, and suggesting he write another work. This is an impossible idea for Salomone.

PH: So Salomone learns to survive without music.

NS: No. From the moment Tomaso begins to bring him small offers via the chimney – fragments of the world, shards of inspiration, such as a yellowing rose, autumn leaves, all of which he is deprived – the sounds of the outside world are restored to him. And on the subject of autumn leaves, how can an Israeli be familiar with the crackling orchestra of autumn leaves? The experience was mine when living in New York 20 years ago. Following months of a difficult pregnancy, during which I was cooped up inside our apartment, with the outside world only reaching me through “filters”, my mother arrived in October to help me with the newborn twins. She suggested I go out of the house and take a walk. Within a quarter of an hour, I was in Central Park – now a veritable palace of mounds of autumn leaves, the wind whisking them up here and there. It was there that I heard the musical resonance of dry leaves. With a sense of urgency, my legs began to carry me off straight into the piles of leaves, crushing the leaves as I went, my own body orchestrating the experience. It was one of the most wonderful concerts I have ever heard. The world of nature, in all its musical splendor, reveals itself as a player, an orchestrator, in which various instruments play together – the air, the wind, treetops, autumn leaves, etc. In “Screwed on Backwards”, Salomone crushes leaves in order to hear them and sense their smell and the air outside.

PH: Let’s go back to a connection you made between the Jewish musician, the musical score and survival.

NS: This element comes into the book on a number of levels. Back in Turin, before his shop was shut down, a Jewish bookseller named Jacobo, fearing his shop would fall into Fascist hands, gave Salomone Levi Verdi’s original handwritten manuscript of “Aida”. When Salomone flees from Turin to the village in Piemonte, he leaves it behind in the apartment. In the year he is hidden in the attic, this fact worries and tortures him; he wonders whether the manuscript had been torn up or ruined or whether a music-lover had entered his apartment and taken it for safe-keeping. Levi was aware that there were Fascists and Nazis with a taste for culture and hoped that that fact would mean the document had been preserved. But the most tortuous thought in his mind was that the German Nazi taken into the house to be Madalena’s “lover”, much as she resented him, thus saving Salomone, was also cultured and a music-lover; the German was constantly requesting that Madalena sing “Aida”.

Salomone Levi survived the Holocaust. The fact that Madalena and her mother managed to save him was a major acheivement in those days. And Levi’s work – his book – survived. Who knows how many works written at the dark time of the Holocaust did not remain – paintings, music, diaries, etc.? If it were not for Theresienstadt and the love of music the Nazi captors had, works such as Viktor Ullmann’s “The Emperor of Atlantis” and Hans Krása’s children’s opera “Brundibar” would have been lost. It is a fact that camp prisoners, aware of the fact that they might perish the following day, came to hear these musical performances. So if my book could represent so many works that did not survive, that is meaningful.

PH: So where do we come into the experience?

NS: In experiencing music, literature and theatre, the listener, reader and observer are actually taking part, creatively adding something of their own. Hearing music, the listener is “playing” the music in his mind. A person involved in reading is indeed “rewriting” the book onto his own personal map.

PH: Writing “Screwed on Backwards” has proved to be a musical experience on many levels.

NS: Yes. Many levels. And, for me, Hebrew is a very musical language. In writing “Screwed on Backwards”, the Hebrew language became a musical instrument for me. Just as Salomone Levi heard music in his mind, I heard music as the novel was being created. I do read music but consider myself a layman in music. When composer Oded Zehavi and I met after he had read the book, he was curious to know what music I had heard in my mind, the sounds from which my inspiration had come. He came to the conclusion that the music playing in my head was that of Arnold Schönberg. Perhaps one day I will hear the music that Salomone Levi wrote and know that that is the music I was hearing! What I do know is that for months I was living with the novel’s “soundtrack” playing in my mind.

PH: In conclusion, how would you summarize the process of artist himself in the book?

NS: One of the dangers of being an artist is that of hubris. All of us creating can so easily become excessively proud and arrogant. Salomone Levi, from being a confident musician at home performing on the stage, receiving standing ovations, ends up lying down in an attic. It is here that he begins discovering the world anew, rethinking it, also from the point of view of music. He senses are now limited - he can see Tomaso only in snatches, he cannot hold Madalena. The only things that reach him are sounds and voices, sounds and voices he had ignored till then. The wind, carrying Tomaso’s voice to him through the chimney has become his friend. The rain becomes his new orchestra. The falling leaves serve as new inspiration to compose. Salomone now understands the score played out by nature and is able to then write a work in hiding, using the instruments at his disposal - imagination and his heart. This is another example of the artist able to create in the direst of circumstances.


Novelist, playwright, film script writer, librettist and poet Nava Semel was born in Jaffa, Israel. Much of her oeuvre bears reference to the Holocaust. “Screwed on Backwards” is her seventeenth book. Her works have been translated into ten languages and have won international prizes. In 2007, Nava Semel was granted the “Literary Woman of the Year” Award of the city of Tel Aviv.

Talking to violin-maker Florian Leonhard at the Eilat Chamber Music Festival

On March 17th 2012, violin-maker Florian Leonhard and I met in the lounge of the Princess Hotel, Eilat. Based in London, Florian Leonhard has been making violins for 30 years. His lecture on the violin and its history was one of the events of the 7th Eilat Chamber Music Festival.

PH: Mr. Leonhard, you are based in London, I believe.

Florian Leonhard : Yes. I have been living there since 1985.

PH: Where were you born?

FL: I was born in 1963 in Düsseldorf, Germany, but my family then moved to Darmstadt near Frankfurt because it was a kind of artists’ town. My father had studied at the renowned Düsseldorf Arts Academy.

PH: Darmstadt is also an important place for contemporary music.

FL: Yes. We did, indeed, attend many of the concerts of the annual festival of contemporary music there; so I grew up hearing a lot of modern music. I do not necessarily enjoy it so much nowadays. But as a child, you listen to music and just take it in. So I think I really understand contemporary music, but feel that a lot of it is not of a high quality…as in some modern art.

PH: I believe you have done a lot of painting.

FL: Yes. Here again, I am not a great fan of abstract art. I see much of it is an excuse for having no skill.

PH: Do you still paint?

FL: Unfortunately, I do not have much time for it at the moment. I was, in fact, so passionate about painting that I did not want to earn my living doing it. It would mean painting what the art market wanted. When I was growing up in the 1970s there were huge investments in art, usually modern art, in works that eventually will not be worth so much, being meaningless and lacking in skill. It comes back to the music scene: we admire someone who can do something new and original.

PH: So let’s get back to music. Are you yourself a violinist?

FL: Not really. I played the ‘cello till age 17, when I was happy to stop and not to have to practice every day. But I did take violin lessons for a year because I thought I should understand how it is played. It is technically so different to the ‘cello: the hands are twisted, the bowing is much lighter: the bow rests on the strings, whereas you really “grip” the bow when playing the ‘cello.

PH: Do you come from a musical family?

FL: Yes. My mother learned the violin in Vienna, but then she decided to study medicine and German literature. She then became a German literature teacher and a wonderful mother; she saw to our education, health, sporting activities, etc. And, in the wider sense of education, our parents took us traveling, to museums, giving us a cultural education and the wherewithal to enjoy life. I am still aware of the confidence, happiness and direction such an upbringing gives one in adult life. Those first 20 years of life are shaped by these things. I am grateful to my parents for this. And my parents never pushed me in any one direction; they watched and monitored as I found my own direction.

PH: What made you choose the profession of violin-making?

FL: Having decided not to be a professional painter, I was actually very interested in surgery, medicine, chemistry and physics. I wanted to become a surgeon. I had my own microscopes; but I also enjoyed working with my hands – putting things back together and making them work. I still remember one Sunday morning at home (I was 16 at the time), how, having removed my mother’s violin from the table in order to lay it for breakfast, I began to examine the construction of the violin; my father, observing, saw how fascinated I was, as my eyes moved over the instrument, taking in its detail in depth. Seeing a future for me that would combine a lot of my interests and qualities, he said “Why don’t you become a violin maker?” I answered that I was going to study medicine. He left it at that, never mentioning it again; but, slowly, over the next two years, it gradually became clear to me that I was absolutely passionate about becoming a violin-maker.

PH: Where did you study the craft?

FL: I was advised by local violin-makers that the best school was in Mittenwald in the German Alps. There, one took seven semesters of study; the school has an intake of six students per class (from all over the world) – I was one of 1200 applicants. In 1981 there were a lot of people wanting to learn violin-making. The course was free and the experience meant total immersion in the subject. It it was tough and demanding, with discipline required to a degree that can not be sustained by every student. Looking back on it today, I have to say that it only covered the rudimentary basics, but it was certainly a good start.

PH: How did you proceed after graduating?

FL: My dream was to work for the most important violin maker, expert and dealer – W.E.Hill & Sons in London. The company had a long-standing reputation – in his diary of 1666, Samuel Pepys referred to Mr. Hill as “ye violin maker”. In 1862, the actual company was formed. After my studies, I was lucky enough to become workshop manager there. When the company unfortunately closed down in 1991, I set my sights at replacing W.E.Hill & Sons in some way. Sad to see an empire disappear, I sensed the importance of recreating the ideal environment in which research would be carried out, fine instruments would be constructed, great players would come to look for an instrument suited to their needs, to have them adjusted and serviced and where experts would be in the stores to serve them for the next generations.

PH: Is there a personal aspect to your profession?

FL: Most definitely. There is the psychological side of the job: all players sometimes need to have a chat about their violin (their “baby”) and I feel I have become close to many of today’s great players and that we have a warm, trusting relationship. I enjoy this. It is based on mutual professional admiration and respect.

PH: Do you deal in violins of the old master builders and, if so, how does that influence the instruments you build yourself?

FL: Yes. I work with Stradivarius violins, of which you can find five or six of them in my safe as well as instruments made by other old great Italian masters of almost 300 years ago. We restore them, opening them up and analyzing them, we adjust the sound and sell them to players who are often helped by syndicates who provide the money for the purchase. My ear was so attuned to the super fine sound of these instruments that I found that, on making my own violins, I have always measured the standard of my own violins against the level of quality of sound and response of those old instruments; so, for 28 years I was not satisfied with my own instruments and did not want to sell them. But I have finally found the way to make the instruments to my own satisfaction.

PH: Are we talking about a secret formula, as referred to in connection with the Stradivarius?

FL: No. First of all, it really is about understanding what piece of wood to choose. The latter is a sense that develops in time – a matter of feeling, of your hands and your ear. One needs to sense how the wood will respond, how much it should weigh, etc. You learn to hold the piece of wood and decide whether to use it or not. I handle thousands of pieces of wood before selecting the right one suited to making a violin. So the choosing involves quite a lot of work and expertise.

PH: From where does the wood come?

FL: Mainly from the European Alps from where, traditionally, all the good wood for violins has come. In Canada and China there is a lot of pine, but it is the European alpine pine which is right for violin-making. It is both light and strong and, most importantly, flexible. The lightness of weight promotes fast response, and flexibility promotes warmth of sound and the ability of the wood to vibrate and send the sound frequencies outwards; the wood’s strength is needed for resistance. Clarity and the core sound (the centre of sound, around which overtones form) are important. The overtones are important; if you cut them out, you are left with a very boring sound. The richer and clearer the play of overtones the instrument has, the more colors the violinist can express and the better the information reaching his listening audience.

PH: And regarding the player?

FL: The violin should be a good-sounding instrument, but it should also be able to make the life of the musician easier. A soloist preparing a large concerto – say, of 45 minutes – has, first of all, to practice for a few hours a day. A poor violin will make practising difficult, not to speak of the 45 minutes of concentration and memory on stage, of bowing and fingering. If you think about this, it is an incredible feat. And, of course, the player wants his instrument to allow him to be expressive; he wants it to have a range of colors, to respond to where you place the bow, to bow speed and bow length.

PH: Let’s get back to the listener. Can the audience judge how good an instrument is? Will listeners naturally go for the sound of an older instrument?

FL: This is a complex issue. An experiment, much talked about in the press in recent months, was carried out in a hotel room in the USA. A few orchestral musicians, concealed behind a sheet, played to people on violins of different standards (including Stradivarius violins). What was interesting is that half of the experts there listening found the non-Stradivarius violins to be better-sounding. I think this whole test is questionable – in 10 minutes’ playing it is so difficult to judge the quality of an instrument. Even hearing each different violin for an hour remains a very dicey and subjective test. So, there will never be conclusive evidence as to whether the new or old instrument is better.

PH: And the player’s choice?

FL: A player will naturally go for the old, much played and “well massaged” instrument because the intonation the violin has in its wood and its “memory” is something the player can just tap into intuitively, deriving much pleasure from it. This is what counts. I see that most great players choose something of the standard of the Stradivarius over a modern instrument. Even if today we make instruments on that level, we have to wait till they are fully matured to get that well-rounded sound. It is a bit like wine: drink a tanning rich wine after two years and it is horrible, but after seven it can be just divine! Although I make my violins of very light wood and the treatment of the wood seems to be good - giving warmth, sonority and clarity - you still have to work harder in playing them than if you are playing a Stradivarius; and players do not need convincing when it comes to that!

PH: Do you make bows?

FL: I personally do not make bows. My main expertise is old Italian violins going up to, say, 1930; my main field is the 17th-, 18th and 19th century Italian violin, this in itself being a very broad field. This expertise means writing reliable certificates for these pieces, helping to authenticate them. I have a bow-maker in my shop, making very fine bows, and I do consult with the greatest bow experts in order to offer my clients the most excellent bows.

PH: Do you work with Baroque violins?

FL: Interestingly, all the 16th-, 17th- and 18th century violins I deal in are, or I should say were, indeed, Baroque violins. A Stradivarius is a Baroque instrument; built at the height of the Baroque era, it was developed, in particular, by the Amati family, into being the perfect, Baroque-shaped instrument, with a Baroque attitude for ornamentation, shaping, etc. Today’s market, leading the ear in this digital age to liking more clarity and sharpness, higher tuning, etc., is so that the money is more in the modern manner of violin-playing. That means that all these originally Baroque instruments are today set up according to the more modern, post-1800s standard: the neck is often slightly longer, the finger-board is much longer, the bass bar is longer than that made in Baroque times and the bridge is shaped a little more efficiently so that it vibrates more quickly and with lightness. Strings nowadays are mostly made with nylon cord wound with several different kinds of metals and the e string is a metal string, which would have been a pure gut string in Baroque times.

PH: But if a Baroque violinist comes to you requesting an authentically Baroque type violin, what will you offer him/her?

FL: We can take an instrument that is no longer set up as Baroque and convert it completely back to being a Baroque violin. I, myself, have also made some Baroque-style violins that sound really quite marvellous. A Baroque set-up is less tight; it is very responsive because of the strings, the shape of the bridge and the lighter bass bar. The truth is that we can now build Baroque violins that are so good that we do not necessarily need to only play only on older Italian instruments. And a Baroque player nowadays does not make enough money from performing and recording in order to buy a Stradivarius violin. It is rare to find a Baroque musician playing on a Baroque set-up Stradivarius.

PH: So how does today's soloist manage to get a Stradivarius?

FL: Young budding soloists will often seek to play a Stradivarius or instrument of that standard. These players have to find syndicates or wealthy people to buy them this instrument. However, most of those wealthy people are not so familiar with the Baroque music scene: they go for more modern repertoire and would rather see their young player performing concertos on a Stradivarius or Guarneri in a very large concert hall. That is why I have, sadly, never been asked to convert a Stradivarius back to the Baroque instrument it was originally. But I make copies of such instruments with the characteristic Baroque neck, the Baroque fingerboard etc., and they work very well. Another option is to buy a cheaper kind of old Italian violin, like a Grancino, converted to a Baroque instrument set-up.

PH: Do you make early bowed instruments?

FL: No. Only the “modern” violin family. But I did once make one tenor viol, very richly inlaid, etc. I love all the carving involved in these instruments. The viol is tricky – but what a sweet-toned, beautiful instrument! I enjoyed making it, but that is not my main field.

PH: Do you have Israeli clients?

FL: Oh yes, yes. As of 2003 I have been the violin consultant and expert for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. We are in constant contact by email, but I come here once a year to meet with them and I will be spending two days with the IPO this coming week. I also work with most of the Israeli violin dealers and makers with regard to authentication and any other advice they may want. If players here want to have a violin repaired I advise them to whom to go and what questions to ask (the latter is very important). The Jerusalem Quartet has bought instruments from me and we enjoy a good friendship. Then there is Guy Braunstein, now concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, also a close friend of mine. Israel has a strong culture of violin-playing.

PH: What do you think of having a chamber music festival in Eilat?

FL: I am so glad it takes place here. Eilat is always associated with water sports and sun; this music is our “sunshine”. The festival should be an ongoing event, with full halls. There is so much pleasure for those attending the festival and meeting many old friends. I was invited to attend the festival by friends and by another violin maker. And the sea and sunshine do make a superb setting for the festival.

PH: At this stage of your career, how do you see yourself and your goals?

FL: I have made a name and reputation. I have been really passionate and in love with my profession all along and have had the energy to excel in it. I am now enjoying sharing my knowledge. Money was never a driving force with me (I was not born a salesman), but I am selling well now because I have a product that people want to buy.

PH: How do you see today’s soloists?

FL: What disappoints me is that some have little intellectual interest in fields outside of their own. However, I do see that there are real virtuosos who have a wider and richer scope. For example, my good friend the violinist Leonidas Kavakos is intensely interested in many different things, and you can hear this expressed in his music. As to myself, violin-making is just one of my many interests.

PH: Would you like to mention some of your other interests?

FL: This answer could take an hour, but the concert hall beckons, so I will try to be concise. As mentioned earlier, there is biology and there is literature – I love Russian writers, for example, old German writers, English- and French writers. I read philosophy texts and like to discuss them. I am passionate about painting, art and museums, theatre and ballet. I like to travel in order to learn about other countries, their people, religions, etc. And then there is sport – skiing and sailing, in particular. I have a skipper’s license and enjoy sailing with friends. In my spare time, I really appreciate being with friends who have interests other than music.

PH: Florian Leonhard, many thanks for your time and for sharing so much interesting information.

Israeli conductor Yaniv Dinur talks about his work and ideals

On February 3rd 2012, Dr. Yaniv Dinur and I met in the music room of my Jerusalem home to talk. Born 1981 in Jerusalem, Yaniv has conducted orchestras in Israel, the USA and Europe.

PH: Yaniv, what were your first musical experiences?

Yaniv Dinur: I should start by saying I was born into a musical family. My aunt was my first piano teacher and my mother studied Musicology. We had a piano at home. There is a picture of me as a baby sitting on my mother’s knee, playing on the keys of the piano. This must have been among my first musical experiences. Both my brother and sister studied the piano with our aunt, but today have chosen different careers.

PH: Where did you start your piano tuition?

YD: I was a pupil at the Conservatory of the Jerusalem Academy of Music. My aunt, Olga Shachar, was a wonderful teacher. I did not get special treatment just because I was her nephew and she was most demanding. She really encouraged and developed my musical intuition and I owe her a lot. For the duration of my IDF army service, I was in the Outstanding Musicians Program as a pianist. I went on to study with Professor Alexander Tamir at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. After graduating from the Academy, I studied with two Russian teachers – Tatiana Alexanderov and Mark Dukelsky - who taught me together, one seated either side of me. They really changed my musical world: these lessons added a new dimension to my playing – both technically and musically. Tatiana and Mark were collectors of historical recordings, and listening to them drew my attention to the interpretations of great pianists and conductors of the past; it was there that I heard recordings of renowned artists such as Josef Hoffmann, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, conductor Felix Weingartner and also of Rachmaninov both conducting and as a pianist. These really made an important impression on me, especially in the specific kind of sound heard then.

PH: When did your interest in conducting begin?

YD: When I was 16, I started studying conducting with Yevgeny Zirlin in Jerusalem. He was an excellent teacher, gave me a very good basis and taught me much about the profession. Under his guidance, I completed two degrees in conducting at the JAMD. After graduating, I went to study conducting privately with Professor Mendi Rodan. This was also a unique experience; actually, I never actually conducted in his lessons – I would go to his home, where we would sit at the piano and discuss scores. He was such an expert on the orchestra in general, and on stringed instruments, in particular. I learned so much from him. He was a special person, with his own particular brand of humor!

PH: I understand you went to the USA in 2007 for further studies. What influenced this decision?

YD: Two years previously, I went to Canada, with the help of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and its CEO Gideon Paz. The purpose of this trip was to attend the Summer Music Institute in Ottawa. The program, which also offers coaching in string-playing and chamber music, is run by Pinchas Zukerman and there is a wonderful orchestra there – The National Arts Centre Orchestra. That year, the conducting course was run by Finnish conductor Jorma Panula and it was a great success. Zukerman invited me to come back the following year, and this time the course was run by Kenneth Kiesler, an American, who teaches at the University of Michigan. On completing the 2007 workshop under his guidance, I decided to follow Kiesler and study with him in Michigan. I spent three years in Michigan, completing a doctorate in conducting. The course itself rose above all my expectations, but adjusting to Kiesler’s approach was no easy task for me. My career had been developing very nicely and I had already had much conducting experience for my age: I had conducted the Israel Camerata Jerusalem when I was 19, being the youngest person ever to conduct an orchestra in Israel. I had travelled Europe conducting many orchestras – in Portugal, Russia, Italy and in Ireland. I had won the Yuri Ahronovitch First Prize in the 2005 Aviv Conducting Competition in Israel. You could say that I was a little arrogant when beginning the course in Ottawa – I was an experienced conductor and was, indeed, familiar with the world of conducting. Kiesler, however, took upon himself to teach me new things, things I was not accustomed to, and it took me a little while to open up to this new experience. But it was there that I discovered new sides to the profession that, till then, had not been familiar to me. Kiesler’s approach certainly changed my way of thinking.

PH: Can you elaborate on that?

YD: Yes. For him, the most central issue is that the conductor should be the visual expression of the music. That means that every little detail of the music…to the point of one conducting movement being suitable to the key of C major and a different movement to interpreting E-flat major! This is most important, because it has a direct effect on orchestral musicians and, therefore, on the quality of the sound they produce. Producing a forte sound does not require large conducting gestures, rather, intense movements. Indeed, if the horns are to play an interval of a fifth, my gesture will be different than if they are playing a fourth. In other words, everything you do as a conductor must be tailored to the music. The important question is how one gets to that. It is a matter of developing a very expressive body language and of reaching the stage that you do not need to “plan” each movement. Kiesler’s advice was “You have to be vulnerable to the music.” This is a very beautiful idea, but suggesting it is easier than putting it into practice. I think that it is only recently that I have learned how to do this myself: to forget all and free myself in order to be open to having the music exert its influence on me. Only following that process can you convey the music to the players, letting yourself be the music. Needless to say, this approach has changed me very much and done much to form me as a conductor.

PH: Did you only conduct orchestral music in Michigan?

YD: No. As doctoral students, we were required to conduct complete opera productions. I conducted “Armide” by Gluck and Benjamin Britten’s “Albert Herring”. It was there that I fell in love with opera and I am really looking forward to conducting more operas. What was wonderful was being in a university town (Ann Arbor) where these opera performances were part of local cultural life and took place in the centre of town. Ann Arbor is a really international cultural centre. It has a fantastic concert hall – the Hill Auditorium - and many of the world’s greatest orchestras come to perform there. While I was there, I got to hear the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and some of the world’s most famous conductors and soloists. Being in a place like that for three years really changes your life.

PH: What other conductors have influenced you?

YD: Another great musician who has influenced me immensely is Pinchas Zukerman. He is simply a magician. I learned a lot from watching him rehearse the orchestra, from discussing music with him and studying his own personal markings on orchestral parts. We are frequently in touch and I learn something new from him every time we meet.

I also conducted the Miami New World Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, the orchestra’s musical director, invited me to spend two days studying with him. We met later in Michigan, also in Israel, and the time I spent with him was most valuable. We talked about how best to learn a score. Tilson Thomas said that, when learning a new work, he asks himself four questions: what is happening in the work, why is it happening, what it means and what I am going to do about it. I also ask myself these questions when learning a new work or reviewing a familiar work, and discover many new things this way.

And then there is Daniel Barenboim. As a young boy, I grew up listening to recordings of him and attending his concerts in Israel. He has been a role model for me from an early age and I had always wanted to meet him. Last December, I finally did. I spent a month in Milan, observing his rehearsals at La Scala. I was amazed at his incredible knowledge of the orchestra and at how he would build the “big picture” of a work by working thoroughly and persistently on every small detail. It was an unforgettable experience.

PH: What were your plans following completion of your doctorate?

YD: To have my own orchestra. At this time, I am a candidate to be musical director of two orchestras in the USA – one in Florida and one in Minnesota. It is quite a lengthy procedure, taking from 18 months to up to two years; this is different to the European- or Israeli procedure. I know the Florida orchestra had 250 applications, the number being narrowed down to five! Following interviews, the five are invited to be guest conductors – my concert with them will be in October and only at the end of the concert season they will make their final choice of new musical director.

Following my studies in the USA, I have been guest conducting in Israel.

I also took part in a project called the “National Conductor Preview”, organized biennially by the League of American Orchestras. Following applications, they choose a few conductors to conduct an orchestra (a different orchestra each time). Representatives of many American orchestras attend the sessions to hear these conductors. I was chosen to conduct last year. My participation has led to my being invited to be guest conductor of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013.

And I will also be going to Sicily to conduct. This will be my first time there.

PH: Would you like to elaborate on your current projects in Israel?

YD: Yes. I recently conducted the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra for the Young Artists Competition; since 2003, I have been conducting the JSO for that annual event. It is important for me to be part of this project that promotes young artists; beyond being a duty, it gives me great pleasure to work with young people and to add to their knowledge. This year’s competition was for pianists. We performed both Liszt piano concertos; it was enjoyable and interesting to perform both concertos in the same concert, as well as Chopin’s second piano concerto. I really grew up with the JSO; my grandparents would take me to their concerts. At age 21, I began conducting the JSO, so I know the orchestra well and the players know me. Working with them is literally “coming home”.

I also have concerts with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra coming up in May of this year. There are two programs. One will be on Lag B’Omer (a joyous holiday which children celebrate sitting around bonfires); we will perform works to do with fire: Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Suite, de Falla’s “Ritual Firedance” and Beethoven’s “Prometheus” Overture. The second program will include the “Firebird”, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no.4 and some movements from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”. I conducted the IPO last season. Contact with the players was very pleasant and totally natural; am very much looking forward to working with them again.

And another exciting venture: the Conservatory of the JAMD has asked me to establish a studio for young conductors. Till now, this has not existed there. (As a young person, I studied conducting there privately.) The Conservatory is aware of the importance of this discipline and intends to make conducting an integral part of studies there. I will be teaching the course and am very excited about it.

I will also be teaching a course of eight sessions at the External Studies Institute of the JAMD. I have called the course “Good Performances, Bad Performances and the Fine Line Dividing Them”. We will confront questions of what makes a good performance and of whether there is such a thing as a bad performance. We will work on some musical analysis; the course will focus on a different composer each time. One session will be devoted to discussing singers and another, to conductors.

PH: Let’s talk about audiences. Do you find differences between Israeli audiences?

YD: Yes. Indeed. I mainly sense a difference between Jerusalem audiences and other Israeli audiences. The Jerusalem audience is tough: it is very genuine in its reactions. Jerusalem concert-goers will make it clear if they don’t like what you do (not in any extreme way) but if they like what you do, they are “on fire”. Outside of Jerusalem, life is different, the man-in-the-street is different, and so it stands to reason that audience reactions in the concert hall will be different.

PH: What about working with different orchestras?

YD: American orchestra members are usually very polite and quiet in rehearsals. If not, they risk losing their jobs. Here in Israel, it is very different, as it is also in countries like Portugal and Italy…freer, noisier and more Mediterranean in atmosphere. However, despite all that, the standard of performance is frequently high.

PH: What issues are important for you in particular in today’s musical world?

YD: One of my fervent desires is to bring young audiences to concerts. This is very high up on my list of priorities and I have spent a lot of time thinking about the importance of doing this. I began working towards this when I was in the USA and will make it my mission to do wherever I end up. Wherever I conduct, I always make contact with the local university, I meet students, give a lecture, often on the connection between music and other art forms. This is a field that has interested me since my teens. One hears many people lecturing on the connection between music and dance or music and painting. However, a lecture I gave in Chicago, and also here at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, for example, focused on the connection between music and architecture. I also talk to the university students about the upcoming concert and invite them to attend. Till then, some of them have not even been aware that there was an orchestra in the town. Of course, I end up seeing them at concerts and am happy about that. What is important is to approach them in the environment of their schools and interest them in the concerts. When I have my own orchestra, I will be able to invest more energy in this important community activity.

PH: How about bringing young people to concerts of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra? The average age of their audiences seems to be very high!

YD: I intend to. The IPO does have youth concerts. In fact, it (and many other orchestras) has a very fine educational program – many concerts for young children and high school pupils, prior to which the pupils are taught about works and styles on the program. The IPO also gives family concerts, explained concerts for adults, the “IPO in Jeans” series, etc. But no orchestra I know of includes a program to involve adult non-music students or, indeed, relates to this age group. Including them will be advantageous not only to the students but also to the orchestra. Orchestral players are certainly influenced by who is seated in the concert hall and whether the hall is full – they play infinitely better to a full hall.

PH: What about early music?

YD: Till the previous summer, I had little to do with early music, when my curiosity regarding this repertoire took me to Vienna to take a course in conducting early music with the Austrian pianist and conductor Manfred Huss. We worked with an orchestra of period instruments. For the first time, I conducted Händel’s “Water Music”, and from the harpsichord. It was an amazing experience! I very much liked the mellow, rich sound and lower tuning of the early instruments. This does not mean that I will now conduct only early music, but I found it enriching and learned much there about musical interpretation. I hope to play the harpsichord in the future…not as a soloist, but in Baroque ensemble music.

PH: Let’s go back to the subject of the piano.

YD: It is difficult to work on the piano and also at conducting. They both need so much time. I do get to the piano now and then. At the moment, the piano is suffering. But I do miss it and will return to practicing, time permitting.

PH: Apart from music, what interests you?

YD: I really like writing. Before I went to the USA, I would write a lot of short stories. A few years ago, I even won third prize in a countrywide short story contest run by the army radio station. Being in America put an end to that temporarily; but I miss it and hope to continue writing at some time. I also love action films – I am addicted to the Dexter TV series!

PH: This is a far cry from conducting! Who is Dexter?

YD: Dexter is an atypical hero who works for the police; he analyzes blood in order to catch killers. The twist is that he himself is a serial killer…but a serial killer with a conscience. The episodes are excellent – full of humor and suspense.

PH: Anything else?

YD: Coffee. I love coffee. I would not say I was an expert on coffee, but I do have a taste for good coffee. When I was in Italy, I went crazy over the coffee there. I could not sleep at night, but it was worth it.

PH: Yaniv, many thanks. It has been very interesting talking to you. I wish you much joy and success in your career.

Harpsichordist Ketil Haugsand (Norway-Germany) talks about his work and early music

On January 6th 2012, I spoke to Norwegian harpsichordist Ketil Haugsand on Skype. He was talking from his music room at his home in Cologne, Germany. No new face in Israel, Professor Haugsand will be conducting and soloing with the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv January 24th and 25th 2012.

PH: Professor Haugsand, what were your first musical experiences?

Ketil Haugsand: Now I haven’t thought about that for a very long time! When I was very small, it would have been music heard on the radio, in church or at home. My father was the headmaster of a Norwegian folk college; these colleges for young adults are very special – the students board and there is a lot of culture in them. My father set very high standards and I think that that is my basis both culturally and musically. My father saw to it that great artists visited there; we had summer courses there – in chamber music, orchestra, etc. I think this formed me very well in my first years: it made me discover my musicality and my wish to become a musician.

PH: What was your first instrument?

KH: I actually started with ‘cello, but then began learning the piano more systematically at age 8 or 9. I played ‘cello for 8 years. My piano studies were in preparation for playing the organ – that is what I really wanted to do. The organ was my big love, and, indeed, I did become an organist.

PH: When did you start playing the organ?

KH: At age 10 or 12…and then, nothing could hold me back.

PH: Do you still play the organ?

KH: Yes, from time to time. Actually, tomorrow I will be playing a Sunday service at the Friedenskirche in Cologne, my first service in an evangelical church in Germany. (We moved to Germany in 1995.) I will both improvise and play organ chorales. The church has a very nice organ: built by a Dutch organ-builder, it is a very nice 13-stop 18th century-type organ with unequal temperament.

PH: Let’s get back to your later music education.

KH: I studied organ with the cathedral organist at the Trondheim Nidaros Cathedral. I literally grew up with the enormous Steinmeyer cathedral organ there and I loved it. (The organ there was built by Johann Joachim Wagner from 1738 to1740, and restored by Jürgen Ahrend from 1993 to 1994.) When I finished that part of my organ studies in Trondheim, I moved to the Oslo Conservatory to continue studies – these including piano pedagogy. In 1968 I went to an improvisation workshop in Haarlem, Holland.

PH: When did you begin playing the harpsichord?

KH: There, in Haarlem, a certain Gustav Leonhardt was holding a harpsichord master class; I was flabbergasted by a very interesting Skowroneck harpsichord that was standing around in that room and discovered that there were other people who were more up-to-date than I in my favorite music! (This was altogether a stormy time in Europe and here I was there being “revolutionary” on the organ.) At one of the students’ concerts, someone played on the harpsichord and there I found myself listening to a sound I had never heard before! That evening in July 1968 changed my life. Since then, I have literally, spiritually and physically been a harpsichordist. I started to use every opportunity available to play on a harpsichord – I could not get enough of it, I was devouring it, totally besotted by this instrument.

So, in 1970, I began five years of harpsichord studies in Amsterdam with Leonhardt. Of course, those years were the most important of my professional life. It took some time, though. This was “love at second sight”…but it was for real! We had chamber music courses; I had played in ensembles before that.

PH: In 1974, you completed your studies in Amsterdam.

KH: Yes, and I returned home to Oslo and started my job at the newly opened Oslo State Academy of Music. Chamber music was on the agenda right away and I had chamber music students. I played in the local Baroque orchestra.

PH: So it was the 1970s and you were now deeply ensconced in the world of Baroque music. Would you like to talk about the musical “climate” of that time?

KH: Yes. I considered myself a “Baroque musician”, which was probably true. The new Baroque “converts” in the 1970s were rather militant converts…like smokers who have given up smoking…Everything in the 1970’s was either very “hip” or militantly “newly convert”. I remember being shocked when a Baroque musician referred to (modern violinist) Arthur Grumiaux as “one of the pigs”! We have a saying in Norway regarding the Hardanger fiddle (a traditional Norwegian fiddle) - that on the normal fiddle you use catgut, but on the Hardanger fiddle you use the whole cat! I venture to say that you could apply that to Baroque violinists of the 1970s. We were all like that, I think. Take Leonhardt, who was very noble and a shining example to all of us around him; then there were musical barricade-runners like Ton Koopman, growing beards and looking more like Karl Marx (and perhaps thinking like him) than anyone else. It got marginally better in the 1980s when the Germans discovered early music (and thought they had invented it) with Rheinhard Goebel running the “barricades” here in Cologne, and the English started to be very active, too. It was interesting: the whole thing had generated in Holland and I was there as it did, and I am very thankful for that. It was very important for me.

PH: Do you compose?

KH: No…not on paper, but I improvise. Improvising nowadays is, of course, a totally different discipline from back then and I would not consider calling it “composition”, although you have to use your head in real time; what you play will probably never be heard again. It is interesting what you can do and what you can not do with improvisation. Of course, I play a lot of basso continuo, in which things are in a harmonic mould: the bass is written and the harmonic structure of the piece does not change. Chords do not lie, but the set-up, timing and realization will vary from performance to performance. So you, as a harpsichordist, are really inside the music, not merely listening to your co-players and accompanying them. You are a part of the music, a partner on equal terms with the other players. That is what I try to convey to students who are learning to play basso continuo. I tell them: “Yes, listen to your partners and see to it that they hear you, but do not “accompany” them because you will always be playing too late and you will be playing on the others’ terms. Listen to the piece itself. What is going on in the music is much more important.”

PH: What harpsichord do you play?

KH: That goes back to the Haarlem experience….that harpsichord that changed my life. In 1970 I visited harpsichord-builder Martin Skowroneck and begged him to put me on his long waiting list, which he did. I waited 17 years – and it was worth every day I waited - and finally took delivery of the harpsichord in 1986. However, during the years I was waiting, I built several harpsichords myself – either from scratch or from kits.

PH: Where are you teaching at the moment?

KH: Since 1994, I have been teaching at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, teaching harpsichord mainly but also chamber music, doing projects, concerts with the students, etc. It is a very nice school, although it does not look much – it is one of those concrete slabs from the early 1970s..come to think of it, I would say, willfully ugly. However, because of that, people tend to have a need to make things beautiful around themselves. The building is so austere; on the other hand, there is nothing disturbing around you and you only look into the music and use your listening senses. I have wonderful colleagues and we do a lot together and are in contact. The students work very well together; there are no elements of unkind competition and I make sure the students in my class work together in a good environment. These things are very important. If intrigues develop in that kind of environment, it is so vulnerable that it will just kill itself and very quickly. It is very important that the students all see each other as friends and colleagues and that they work with one another. The fact that we communicate on a very informal footing means that we have trust in each other; it does not mean we show disrespect or are sloppy in the way we go about our music. On the contrary, we are very strict about teaching and learning in depth and the students know they have to work hard. I think the school’s Early Music Department is a good example of how people can work together. Compared to mainstream music academia, where colleagues are still extremely formal, we don’t have the need to keep a distance from each other and I feel we work together very well together for that very reason.

PH: What about your own performing at the moment?

KH: It’s slightly slow at the moment due to the level of culture in Europe….and, perhaps, my not-very-sharp elbows. The telephone rings from time to time (and I occasionally pick it up). But, joking aside, it is all going well. Apart from solo recitals, there are workshops and summer courses, and, of course, I play with various artists and ensembles. We had some performances in Trondheim, Norway in the summer of 2011. I was then engaged to perform in the Oslo Chamber Music Festival in August; that was very interesting because they wanted a French slant to the festival and they wanted early music. And they were extremely taken with my recently issued Forquerey CD. So they wanted me to play Forqueray, Bach and Couperin. That was a wonderful week…I gave, I think, five recitals. That was the highlight of the summer. Since then, I have performed in Poland, Italy, and so on.

I also perform with a very dear colleague of mine - Dutch recorder-player Peter Holtslag, who is professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater (Hamburg University of Music and Theatre). In the Autumn, we really enjoyed the Bucharest Early Music Festival – an excellent festival, run by a people who are very eager and knowledgeable; I have been the musical director of it for a few years. They also work with a Flemish ensemble called “Il Gardellino”, Jan de Winne, Marcel Ponseele and Shalev Ad-El being among their players. I play with them from time to time: we played Brandenburg Concertos and harpsichord concertos, a Magnificat…it was all a wonderful experience. I conducted there. The female voices, by the way, were from the Romanian Radio Children’s Choir. Bucharest is an important venue; Eastern Europe is always interesting. It is a bit like Israel in the 1980s – it is “new territory” for this kind of thing; the Eastern Europeans don’t mind traveling to other places to study and perform, but it is when you meet them on their own turf that things become really interesting: they feel at home and do things they have always wanted to do. When I went home to Norway, it was also “new territory”.

PH: That brings me to the next question: how do you see the early music scene at the moment?

KH: In my opinion, the established early music world has long sunk a little into a mainstream routine. “Routine early music practice” can be extremely boring; although people may good players and singers, if they do not have a really good and cultivated background as performing artists, the quality of results of how they perform will be limited. Early music is so vulnerable that, as soon as you start to hear “good” beats and “smell” every bar-line, and nothing else really emerges, it is no thank you!

PH: You have made several visits to Israel.

KH: Why I came to Israel back in the 1980s was due to the fact that some Israeli people came to the Ringve International Summer Course in Norway, a course in existence since 1977. Actually, it is the longest-existing early music course in the world and is still going strong! I have been involved in it since 1982. As I mentioned, some Israelis attended the course – Idit Shemer, Netta Ladar, and others. Then violinist Daniel Fradkin came there and was ready to play concerts with me as soon as possible. He organized concerts and I came to Israel to play Bach Sonatas with him in 1986 in Jerusalem and at the Ramat Hasharon Music Club. I met Hed Sella, today executive director of the Jerusalem Music Centre, and he engaged me to come to teach at the Early Music Workshop. Hed Sella’s policy was very sound: as Israelis then did not yet travel much, there should be an influx of teachers and players coming to teach in Israel and influence young players. This must surely have been one of the most meaningful projects he has promoted; he bent himself over triple to make it exist. He laid some extremely valuable foundations for the whole field of early music in Israel, and the way he did it was very important.

PH: And you will be back in Israel again very soon.

KH: Yes, and I am extremely happy about coming to Israel as I love to work with chamber orchestras like the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra. Musical director of the JBO David Shemer and I are colleagues and old friends and I was very flattered to be invited to do the concert. Actually, I probably know many of the JBO players, but just have not seen them for ten years. It feels like it’s time to be back in Israel.

PH: Would you like to talk about the works to be performed in the program titled “The Brotherhood of Peoples”?

KH: Sure. It is a program with an 18th century international flavor. We are going to perform this wonderful Telemann suite called “Overture of the Modern and Ancient Nations” , in which Telemann makes fun of the French, talks about the “ancient” and “modern” Germans (whatever that might be); then he talks about the ancient- and modern Swedes. And as if that were not enough, he also talks about the ancient- and modern Danes! Then he has a gavotte curiously titled “Les vieilles femmes” (the old women), typical Telemann…. Another work played will be an instrumental suite I put together of Rameau’s “Les Indes galantes” (The Galant Indians) in which he addresses what he believes to be the style of the Persians, Indians, Incas – very charming and typical Rameau. And then we have the C major Orchestral Suite of Bach and I will also play the F minor Harpsichord Concerto, the latter being the tightest-packed nine minutes in harpsichord history. It is very short, but so complex and packed so effectively and efficiently that you do not notice that it is only nine minutes long! There is so much going on in the piece that it gives the player and listener the impression that it is much longer! This concerto is very tricky to play and I am currently wrestling with it, a very sobering experience every time I take it up. I have played it a number of times, but it never ceases to be a challenge, and that is beautiful. And, back on the subject of the Skowroneck harpsichord, I will be playing on David Shemer’s Skowroneck harpsichord in the JBO concerts.

PH: What about future plans?

KH: Well, I am retiring from my professorship in Cologne this coming summer. I feel like quite a young 64-year-old and hope to have an “unrestful” retirement. I have lots of plans, ranging from finally getting around to writing “the book” on harpsichord technique and also to putting together my E-type Jaguar.

PH: Did I hear right?

KH: Yes. I am restoring a 1961 car. It is standing in the winter garden, waiting for me to dust it off, unpack it and start tinkering again.

PH: And other interests?

KH: My interests are very wide and varied! For years I was into flying, but gave up when people I liked lost lives doing so. That’s when I “moved down to earth” to restoring this car. We restored the house in which we live now – that took ten years. Then I plunged into being a Mac freak, but that has also waned, which is fine. Believe it or not, I am very interested in music and active on Facebook, where I see to it that some occasional political sidekicks pinpoint things running round my head. The latter takes up too much time; I use Facebook as a blog more than anything else. It gives me far too many friends whom I do not really know. I also make videos of records I have in the house and post them on YouTube. I try to spend my time wisely. My school and students are very important to me; my daughters are growing up and slowly leaving the nest. Life goes on. This is not the general rehearsal!

PH: Professor Haugsand, it has been fascinating talking to you. Many thanks.

Baroque violinist Walter Reiter (UK) talks about his musical life, teaching internationally and the early days of the Baroque scene in Israel

I spoke to Baroque violinist Walter Reiter (UK) December 13th 2011 prior to his visit to Israel to teach in the second Tel Aviv Early Music Seminar Tel Aviv and to lead and solo in the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra’s upcoming “Celebrating Christmas & Chanukah” concert.

PH: Professor Reiter, would you like to talk about your earliest music experiences?

Walter Reiter: My earliest musical memories are of bagpipe bands and drums where I was brought up on the north coast of Ireland; there the Protestants played bagpipes and drums and the Catholics played Irish music. My earliest ambition, like that of many boys in the village where we lived, was to be a pipe band leader. It was a good lesson as how divisive religion can be: we were one Jewish family among 700 Protestants and 300 Catholics.

PH: When did you start to play an instrument?

WR: My mother was from a very musical family in Vienna. The youngest of five children, she could play the piano fairly well (we had a hired piano in Ireland) and she played the violin very badly. But, as there was nobody to teach my brother and me the violin where we lived in Ireland, she decided to teach us herself. Her sister, who lived in Holland, sent us violins and music and vaguely told my mother how to do it, and that is how we learned the instrument for the first few years! There were some other people who tried their hands at teaching us; there was an Italian ice-cream man, but my mum thought he was useless…which he probably was. When I was ten, we moved to England.

PH: So you continued your music education in England.

WR: Well, it was very unorthodox. As soon as we moved to England, my mother sent us to a really good teacher in London at the Royal Academy. I stuck that for about three years, I guess. The teacher was probably a very good teacher, but I did not really understand why she wanted me to be so disciplined. When I was fifteen, she suggested I enroll in the Academy proper the following year. I said I did not want to and she said she would not teach me any longer. So I stopped having lessons for about four years, by which time I could play some Sarasate and such works, all with lots of flair and very little orthodox technique.

PH: So when was the turning point?

WR: It was not, actually, until I went to the University of Glasgow, where I studied Drama and Philosophy, that I started playing chamber music and decided I really wanted to be a professional violinist. (Glasgow University is near some of the most beautiful scenery in the world and I love walking. More about that later) Lots of people said that, at 21, I should already be playing Paganini, etc. However, I had a really wonderful teacher – Leonard Friedman, a fine musician - who said it was too late for me to become a virtuoso violinist or a soloist, but that I could become a good musician. He said I should forget my age and just do the work. I left the university to study with him.

I came down to London, studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music. By that time I had met Yona Etlinger, who said I should go to Israel. (I had dreamed of studying in Moscow.) So in 1970 I went to Israel and attended one of Ramy Shevelov’s amazing summer courses. I was not really good enough to actively take part in the course; I just took lessons with him throughout that summer. But I was bowled over by the superb quality of playing I heard there and thought that I must be in Israel.

PH: So you moved to Israel.

WR: It was not logistically possible to stay in Israel then, but I was ready to throw away my return ticket and continue studying with Shevelov. I went back to London, graduated and returned to Israel. I studied with Ramy for about three years in all. He was the most superb musician and teacher and I think that were it not for him, I would not be playing the violin today. However, living in Israel was a little difficult in the sense that one could not study and earn money at the same time. But, as luck would have it, I landed a job in the Yehudi Menuhin Festival Orchestra (formerly the Bath Festival Orchestra), which meant about four months a year working and traveling the world; I would rush back to Israel for a few weeks at a time to continue my studies.

PH: You also studied in Europe.

WR: Yes, I studied with Sandor Végh (of the Végh Quartet), for a year in Germany. He was fantastic. I worked really hard there. But I eventually came back to Israel and started teaching in the Rubin Conservatory (today known as the Conservatory of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance) and at the Jerusalem Academy of Music.

PH: You have always had a great love of teaching.

WR: Yes. I taught even when a student: it is so inspiring to guide young people through the mysteries of music-making, and it keeps me young too! On my return to Israel I was incredibly lucky: even in my first year I had three or four pupils who were really outstanding. Among those who have made fine careers are Shlomit Sivan and violists Yoel Greenberg (the Carmel Quartet) and Amir van der Hal (IPO). I think one of the motivations for my teaching so much is because of my own completely unorthodox musical training.

For two years, while teaching in Jerusalem, I studied violin pedagogy with Russian-born violinist Felix Andrievsky, who came to Jerusalem from the Menuhin School. What I learned from him has been so valuable. At that time, I began playing part-time in the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, too.

PH: Which was when your interest in Baroque violin started?

WR: I had always been interested in Baroque music, having played a lot of it at university. But yes, it was around this time that I started grappling with the Baroque violin; I think I was the first Baroque violinist in Israel! We had a small group of players – we called ourselves “Camerata Yerushalayim” - and I also participated in Bach cantatas every week at the Van Leer Institute. I looked around for a bow: the violin-maker and ‘cellist Yossi Boazson had an East German viola da gamba bow, probably a terrible, factory-made bow, and together we played some concerts. One concert was at Beit Hillel and that was on the very day the Laurette Goldberg arrived in Israel. She was my Baroque “fairy godmother”. Having flown from San Francisco, she arrived at the concert hall straight from the airport with Professor Jehoash Hirshberg; Jehoash had told her that there was not much going on in Baroque music in Jerusalem, but that there was to be a recital that evening. After the concert, Laurette came to me, gave me a big hug and told me she had come to Israel to start a Baroque orchestra and that I was to lead it, adding that I knew absolutely nothing about the Baroque violin and that she would teach me! So that is how it…sort of…started. She brought over some musicians who worked at the Jerusalem Music Centre. All were principals of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of the West. The violinist was Michael Sand, there was the amazing viola da gamba player Susie Napper and there was Bruce Haynes, one of the first people to play the Baroque oboe. They all came over and started a band, but we could not work without them as there were not enough people interested.

At the end of that year, I went across to Paris for the summer to have more lessons with Michael Sand. There, I was offered a job with “Les Arts Florissants”. I decided to take a sabbatical year from teaching in Jerusalem to work with “Les Arts Florissants”. Still based in Jerusalem, I think I went over to Europe eight times that year! However, “Les Arts Florissants” was offering me so much work that we moved to Europe in 1986. I worked with “Les Arts Florissants” and with other groups for three years.

I eventually moved back to London, getting a job with “The English Concert”, where I have been principal second violin for 10 years, eventually also leading “The Sixteen”.

PH: What other interesting things are you doing at the moment?

WR: I am doing a lot of teaching….I have 11 pupils at Trinity College London, and one at the Royal Academy of Music. And I teach in The Hague, where I am sharing the teaching duties of a class with Kati Debretzeni, who had been a pupil of mine in Israel. I suppose I helped to form quite a few of the Israeli Baroque players: Kati, Dafna, Lilia Slavni….

PH: Would you like to talk about your Cuban Baroque music project?

WR: Yes. And if we have been talking about my passion for teaching, I confess my favorite place to teach is in Cuba, where I am about to go on my eighth visit. That started when I met some Cuban people who were trying to play the Baroque violin and, rather like me many years ago, did not really know what they were doing. Incredibly musical, talented and intuitive, they suggested I come to Cuba to teach. I received an official invitation to go there and taught on a voluntary basis. On our first visit there, my wife, singer Linda Perillo - who kind of introduced Baroque singing to the island - and I performed a concert of music by Muffat, Biber and Schmelzer; the people there were so enthusiastic. Their musicians are very well trained: they go through the Soviet system of training, but they themselves are Latin and African, so not at all rigid and also not especially disciplined. (They spend most of their time playing or laughing.) But they have incredible musical intuition and initiative, learn quickly and progress on their own. For example, there was a young man there who wanted to play the theorbo. He got a local instrument-maker to build him one, I found him the strings and the next time I came he could play his theorbo…without a single lesson!

We all got on extremely well and I realized there was great potential there. Here was a place where people just love music (including classical music) and where a huge percentage of people play musical instruments. So I started going over there to teach and direct, and now there is actually a thriving Early Music scene in Havana. They have an early music festival in February, they have organs, harpsichords, and viols and, in fact, some players have now studied at the Schola Cantorum in Basel. On my next visit, I will be going to Santiago to “convert” them there as well. Now my work there is sponsored by the Salzburg “Mozarteum” which has an outreach program in Latin America. On my next visit there in April, I will be teaching Baroque violin for a week and coaching a Baroque orchestra as well; actually two, because one of the arts high schools now has its own! I call it my “Chiquitica (littlies) Baroque Orchestra”! In the second week, it will be music of the Classical period – probably Beethoven’s Symphony no.1 or possibly a Schubert symphony. There will be a concert with the Baroque Orchestra plus a performance of a Classical symphony. Some of the Santiago people will come to Havana …riding 14 hours in a bumpy bus to Havana…all for their love of music.

PH: I would like to hear about your books.

WR: As a teacher, I have decided that students want to know about style and how to interpret the large repertoire of Baroque music. By the end of one-, two- or three years of training, they are not able to sit down in an orchestra and play a Händel oratorio or a Mozart symphony in style. So I decided to put together a compendium of Baroque “Ėtudes”. They are not études at all but a selection of pieces from easy ones to very advanced. It will be in three volumes, one of which has already been published. I am also busy putting together a Baroque anthology for young children. There are plenty of those around, but there is nothing in that field with any air of historical performance practice. There will be four books of that, to be published by Schott Music Ltd. And I am writing a book about how to play the Baroque violin, partly inspired by the fact that a lot of people do not have access to Baroque violin teachers. These players end up imitating things, without necessarily knowing why. The idea of the book is to have a kind of Baroque method, as it were. It is a kind of “do-it-yourself” Baroque violin manual.

PH: And then there is another book.

WR: (hesitating) Ah, yes. The novel….I have been writing it for about eight years. I do that in my “spare time”, that is when I am on tour, sitting in hotels. I hope to finish it eventually…

PH: What is it about?

WR: Love. What else?

PH: What are your future plans?

WR: My diary is very full. We are very busy with the English Concert. We are supposed to be doing an opera every year for the next five years at Carnegie Hall. We will then do the same opera at Theater an der Wien (Vienna). Still leading “The Sixteen”, we have a whole series of Monteverdi recordings to do and we are about to record Händel’s “Saul”; we also do a Händel opera in Buxton (northern England) every year. I lead a group in Norway, which I love, and we are trying to get the ensemble to Cuba to do a joint concert of the B Minor Mass, which has never been performed in Cuba! And I have lots of recitals…

In the very immediate future, I am about to return to Israel to do some teaching in Tel Aviv. There is a lot of interest in Baroque playing in Israel and a high standard of string-playing. Dare I say that in the early days of my playing Baroque music in Israel, there was a huge amount of vociferous opposition to our approach to the genre, often quite vitriolic! I once heard Isaac Stern actually call early music a “crime”? Things certainly have changed!

PH: And you will also be leading and soloing with the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra in concerts in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Would you like to talk about the program?

WR: Well, it is a Chanukah/Christmas program. I will be playing two of Biber’s “Rosary” Sonatas, which I recorded some years ago as well as other Biber works with the chamber group. We will also be playing some Muffat – Biber’s contemporary in Salzburg who had worked with Corelli in Rome – as well as Christmas Concerto. Muffat also studied in Paris and we will play a piece by Rebel “Les Caractères de la Danse” and some “Noëls pour les Instruments” by Charpentier. The Overture to Händel’s “Judas Maccabaeus” provides the Chanukah element and ties in nicely with Corelli, as the two worked together in Rome.

PH: When it is not music, what are your interests?

WR: Reading and writing and trying to keep fit. I love walking and am still “living” a walking holiday I had in Ireland with my son three months ago.

PH: Professor Reiter, it has been most interesting talking to you. Thank you for your time.

Professor Andre de Quadros talks about his varied professional life and ideas

On November 5th 2011, I talked to André de Quadros, who was back in Boston, where he lives, after working with young Jewish and Arab singers from Emek Hefer and Shefar’am and holding a conducting workshop in Jerusalem for young Jewish and Arab musicians in Jerusalem. De Quadros is one of the most prominent activist musicians in human rights in the world today. He is professor of Music and Music Education at Boston University and a member of the African Studies Center, the Center for the Study of Asia and the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations.

PH: Professor de Quadros, are you from a musical family?

André de Quadros: I come from Goa, India. Goan communities are very family- and culture oriented. Everyone is expected to sing and dance. My father was a physician, but he was also a champion ballroom dancer. My mother was one of five children, each of whom played the piano or sang. My maternal grandfather was a violinist. My earliest musical memory is probably of my mother playing the piano, with us standing around her, singing.

PH: When did you start learning an instrument?

AdQ: I was sent to learn the violin at age four. In those days in India, sheet music was too expensive to buy. I remember my violin teacher writing out a piece for me every week – a movement from “Dido and Aeneas” or a minuet, for example.

PH: So you had your musical education in India.

AdQ: Yes. I learned the violin for a number of years and then I started conducting. Actually, I began conducting totally by accident and then discovered I had a passion for it. I was studying for a degree in Economics and Statistics at the University of Bombay. One of my friends there was a very fine pianist and he invited me to go with him to a choir rehearsal. He was the choir pianist and needed someone to turn his pages. So I went along as his page-turner! It so turned out that the conductor would not be able to be able to be present at the choir’s next concert. None of the singers agreed to fill in for him and my friend was needed at the piano. They then turned to me. I said I could read a single line of music but had never conducted. The choir members assured me it would be fine; they would just need me to start them off. That was the beginning of my conducting career!

PH: What interests you about conducting?

AdQ: I had never seen conducting earlier on but became fascinated by it as means of communicating, as a unifying gestural language.

PH: Did you then study conducting?

AdQ: Fortunately for me, there was a very distinguished German conductor – Joachim Buehler - on an assignment in India; he took me on as his protégé. I was very happy working with him, soaking up so much knowledge and experience from him. This was one of the most important learning experiences I have had. He really nurtured my passion for conducting and did a lot to develop me pedagogically and artistically.

PH: Where did you take higher studies?

AdQ: After working in India in industrial chemistry, I went to Australia. In Australia, I worked in computing, retail and economic research. There, I decided to study music and took composition and musicology at La Trobe University, Melbourne. After that, I earned a degree in movement and dance; this interested me a lot as a language of gestures and the body. I went on to study at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg on a German government scholarship; following that, an artist’s diploma in conducting from the Victorian College of the Arts of Melbourne…you could say I did 14 years of university studies.

PH: Would you like to talk more about your involvement with dance?

AdQ: I taught dance for a number of years and still have some contact with it. Before teaching the recent course in Jerusalem, I did a project in Emek Hefer with a youth choir – the Efroni Choir- and an Arab choir from Shefar’am. I have been incorporating dance into workshop activities. (My own choir in Indonesia works with traditional dance and choreography.)

PH: You certainly have a wide range of disciplines.

AdQ: I was doing much more orchestral work in Australia. I have worked with choirs all over the world, not only as a guest conductor; I had my own choirs in Australia. I am now the conductor and musical director of the Manado State University Choir in Indonesia. I do a lot of travel, giving courses and master classes, mostly in conducting. This year, for example, I have given a master class/conducting courses in China, Norway, Indonesia and Jerusalem. In February, I am giving a master class in France. Most of the people taking my classes happen to be conductors or, at least, accomplished musicians, as are the people I worked with at the Jerusalem workshop. There is more demand for my work than I have time for. Actually, I go where it interests me to be; there is no routine arrangement.

PH: On what does your teaching work in Boston focus?

AdQ: In Boston, I only work with graduate students who are doing masters- and doctoral degrees in music education. The students are doing various projects in the USA and further afield: one is finishing a doctorate on an American band organization and another one is working on some kind of project in Indonesia; two are writing dissertations on choral music. And I am also in the middle of a lot of my own projects: editing and writing chapters for the Cambridge Companion to Choral Music (to be published by Cambridge University Press) and finishing a book on music education.

PH: I have read that you are doing work on Muslim music.

AdQ: Yes, I do. I am fascinated by music from the pan-Muslim world. One genre that interests me, for example, is the muwashah style, a choral song that originated in the 13th- and 14th centuries in the Muslim Spanish tradition. Indonesia interests me greatly. There are some very interesting song forms that have spread all over the Moslem world; for example, the Sufi tradition, a pan-Islamic tradition (which has connections with Jewish tradition) is both traditional and intensely spiritual.

When I was in Israel, I had the opportunity to interview a Muslim imam.
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PH: How do your views on music connect with community concerns?

AdQ: The question is – what are the cultural values of music education? In conservatories we prepare people for the professional world, even where the professional world is diminishing in its capacity to absorb graduates into it and to offer work. We prepare students for a world that is completely modernized. Music conservatories do not prepare their students to work with those who are homeless, with the dying, with people in extreme poverty, etc. If we do see music as having power, we are certainly not carrying that vision into the larger frame. I think that we should be using music to bring people together as communities, to change people, to humanize people, to make them gentle, and more. I have become very interested in community development and community mobilization of the arts. A couple of years ago, I worked with a prison choir in Bangkok; I was both inspired and touched by the inmates’ engagement with music and their need – no, their hunger - for it. So now, together with one of my colleagues, I am starting a choir in a prison in Boston.

PH: And your work in public health?

AdQ: I have been involved in this field for two or three years now, and for the last year, I have been co-developing a project in a shanty town in Lima, Peru. It is a research project to improve the community’s health, working within it through the arts – music, theatre and dance. That is a big part of my work at the moment.

PH: We met recently in Jerusalem. Was this your first visit to Israel?

AdQ: Oh, no. I have been here quite a few times.

PH: What thoughts and aims do you have about being here in Israel and making music here?

AdQ: First of all, I am not an Israeli and not a Palestinian, so I have no vested interests here. Of course, I do have my political sympathies. It was interesting to work with the Efroni Choir from Emek Hefer (Maya Shavit, conductor) and the Sawa Choir (Sawa means “together”) from Shefar’am (conductors: Rahib Hadad, Eva de Majo) and to hear them talking about their thoughts on our work – socially, culturally, politically. One person claimed it was very easy for me to be doing this as I am an outsider and “not here, you are not from the United States and not really from anywhere but you belong everywhere!” Well, I have been an immigrant for all of my life and can communicate in many languages. I am not like a tree that is rooted in one particular location. I am movable and relocatable.

Back to making music here, there are a number of arguments. One is the deceptive view that music can solve the problems of any community. Music can not bring peace to the Middle East (and music can not solve the problems of Sri Lanka, where I will be in three weeks’ time.). However, bringing people together to work together, sing together, play together, to make poetry together, to experience interaction on the human level allows us to appreciate who the other person might be. On the choir workshop day, the young Jewish and Arab participants claimed that “they are like us” and that they did not want the problems the older generation had handed down to given them. In this encounter, we took things further than just singing together: we sang a piece from the opera “Rinaldo” treating it as not just as a piece of classical music, but as a musical activity that gave the young people an opportunity of bringing in their own feelings and emotions. Everyone sang a Sufi song in Arabic and then we created a kind of accompaniment in which these young people improvised, some of them singing a solo of even just a few seconds – for example, one was based on a quotation from the Hebrew Bible; there was quite a lot of interesting experimentation. One young Arab sang a long song in Arabic. The Emek Hefer singers did not understand the words, but that did not matter. The important thing was that all felt safe to use the musical endeavor as a platform for personal expression.

In the Jerusalem conducting workshop, we had seventeen students, five of whom were Arabs. All were either Music Academy students or graduates.

PH: What are your interests outside of music?

AdQ: All my interests, philosophy and lifestyle are integrated: the way I live, the way I eat and work artistically all fit into my entire view of the world, of the environment and art. I am, indeed, very interested in the environment. I read a huge amount – fiction, about science, about the arts. I am interested in politics. I am interested in acquiring languages and would very much like to learn Hebrew, but I do not see I will do it in this lifetime!

PH: Professor de Quadros, thank you for your time. And, many thanks for sharing so many interesting thoughts and ideas.

Ivan Velikanov talks about Alta Capella, the first professional early music ensemble to come out of Russia

On October 15th 2011, I met with Ivan (Yohanan) Velikanov on the terrace of Jerusalem’s lively Paradiso Café-Restaurant. Velikanov, 25, is the founder and musical director of the Alta Capella Ensemble from Moscow, four of whose members are in Israel for a short concert tour.

PH: Ivan, are you from Moscow?

Ivan Velikanov: Yes, I am. Our group is based in Moscow, but not all players are originally from there.

PH: How many players are you?

IV: All in all, 13 players, but the number depends on each individual program. We have some permanent members and others whom we call on when we need them. And the permanent members play different instruments, according to what we are performing; we play a wide range of music and from several periods. For example, for 15th century music we need shawms but we do not need violins. When we play 17th century music, mostly on cornets and sackbuts, we need Baroque violins as it is normal for this music to combine these with basso continuo. So you could say our ensemble is flexible. We have a choice of Baroque violinists in Moscow, but when it comes to instruments like the shawm, bombard and cornett, the core of the ensemble provides those. For example, when it comes to the cornett, played in the Renaissance and early Baroque, our instrumentalist Maxim was the only player in Russia. Actually, I have begun playing it now; so you might say there are now one and a half cornett players in Russia! We play music spanning from the 13th century up to the early 18th century.

PH: How long has the ensemble been in existence?

IV: A little over two years. Almost all the players are students or graduates from the Moscow Conservatoire. I, myself, studied composition there and now I am back there studying orchestral conducting. Maxim, with us here in Israel, who plays first cornett, bombard (alto shawm) and other instruments, graduated in orchestral conducting.

PH: How do you create such an early music ensemble in a country that has very little tradition in performing music from this time? How do you find teachers?

IV: Finding teachers is a big problem. There have never been shawm- or cornett teachers in Russia and there still are not. We, ourselves, will be the first generation of professional masters of these instruments in 10 or 15 years. So we are self-made early music instrumentalists, although we have much training in other musical fields. What I do is invite some of western Europe’s finest early music specialists to give master classes in Moscow – such as the great French cornettist and expert in Renaissance improvisation William Dongois; his guidance was very useful, not just for cornett players. The brilliant Italian shawm player Isacco Colombo has tutored us. We have also been to Germany to attend master classes.

PH: So you are the first professional early music ensemble in Russia.

IV: You could say so. There are some instrument makers in Russia who dabble in the playing of early instruments. Do they play authentically? Well, the question of authenticity is a tricky one. How do we know how the shawm should really sound? It is not like the clarinet, whose uninterrupted history allows us to know the styles of playing of the various schools. As to professional playing of early brass instruments, we are the first.

PH: What is important for you to develop in such an ensemble?

IV: The music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance offers much opportunity for improvisation, more than we could hope to do as yet. In fact, what is written down is more a recording of improvisation than composition itself. In the 15th century, the tenor line might be written out, but even that was not always necessary as many works were based on well-known melodies. We need to be flexible enough to play many styles from many countries.

PH: You have much fine music teaching in Russia. How do the great masters relate to this newly developing field?

IV: They are steeped in their own tradition and their work is to pass on this strong musical tradition. If a conservatory professor of modern violin hears or senses (perhaps in the sound or bowing) that the student is playing Baroque violin, he will feel it his duty to stop him/her. For them, the huge range of medieval and Renaissance music is categorized as “pre-Bach”!

PH: What, then, is the situation in Russia regarding Renaissance music?

IV: We are the pioneers. As to early trombones, we now have the first sackbuts in Russia. I purchased four in Switzerland and gave them to four of our players to learn. They do not tell their trombone teachers, but their teachers have picked up their new approach to brass playing, wondering why they are playing so softly, when orchestral trombonists need to produce fff sounds! Renaissance instruments demand different techniques, a different way of thinking, in order to give the music its correct meaning. The players need to adjust to smaller mouthpieces, to a different use of lips and muscles.

PH: You have also founded a Renaissance festival.

IV: Yes. The first one was just this last April. It mostly consisted of several days of classes (Colombo was teaching there) and it finished with a concert in which we played together with the tutors. I feel this is a very important step in our development.

PH: This must be new to the Russian concert public. Are your concerts well received?

IV: Audiences show curiosity, just as they might if there were a concert on Japanese instruments or any other exotic instruments. People are curious and do ask questions, especially about the instruments. But beginning to perform to Russian audiences is no simple matter. We can not change styles of playing to create a more familiar musical environment in order to “win over the public”; and the other extreme is playing “music for musicians”. So the musical direction of a group such as ours is a delicate issue at this time of early music development. However, I really want to expose the rich gamut of early music to the Russian public.

PH: So what instruments do you play?

IV: I started with the piano as a child but, from age seven or eight, I have wanted to be a composer. I still play piano but had never intended to be a professional pianist. I play harpsichord and organ and I play the organetto – a small portable pipe instrument, pumped with one hand and held on one’s lap…and it has a dynamic range - this instrument was played only in the 14th- and 15th centuries and can be seen in paintings, such as frescoes of Giotto. I bought my organetto in Germany and took some master classes with Guillermo de Pérez, a great exponent of the instrument. There is much polyphony one can play on it, even with one hand. It sounds wonderful with strings – we have a fiddle player. And, as mentioned earler, I am now playing some early brass. We early musicians can not limit ourselves to one instrument.

PH: Ivan, do you sing?

IV: I am currently studying the singing of medieval music with a very fine singer – a Russian woman who has studied at the Basel Schola Cantorum.

PH: Would you like to talk about your composing?

IV: Yes. The life of a composer is very difficult, especially if one does it to the exclusion of other musical activities. At age 14 and 15, I studied composition and musicology. Composing is emotionally so difficult; I actually underwent a crisis and stopped writing. But nowadays, I do compose sometimes….even for our ensemble. For example, I wrote a piece for cornett and theorbo for our players.

PH: In what style is your music?

IV: I do not permit myself to think about style. A composer considering that nowadays will be lost. It is not natural for a composer to choose.

PH: Let’s talk about your performances at the Yehiam Renaissance Festival (October 16th to 18th)directed by harpsichordist Marina Minkin..

IV: Our performances have two separate themes: one is music “Outside the Castle” and the other, “Inside the Castle”. In the first, we will perform authentic Alta Capella music - music of the 14th-, 15th- and early 16th century on shawm, bombard (alto shawm), slide trumpet and percussion. We will perform on the terrace of the ancient Yehiam fortress. In these concerts, will explain a little about the instruments and works and I will also be singing. The program will include works from Landini, to Dufay sacred music, to the anonymous dances collected by Italian Renaissance dancing master Domenico da Piacensa. Our second program will consist of 16th- and 17th century music with continuo – organ or harpsichord. And here, coming back to improvisation, we will be playing music such as sets of diminutions (improvisations written down) for the entertainment of the Yehiam festival-goers that did, originally, have didactic aims. In a Palestrina madrigal or Lasso’s “Suzanne un jour” the ornamenting of the top line is a musical, stylistic and emotional process.

PH: So you have two very different programs.

IV: Indeed. Both musically and instrumentally. In the second program, I will play not percussion but continuo, Maxim is playing not bombard but cornett, George is playing not shawm but recorder and Alexandra is not playing slide trumpet but natural trumpet. In the “Inside the Castle” program we will present music that is more “gallant”, more delicate, and, as I said earlier, much written down improvisation – works of Bassano, Frescobaldi, and more.

PH: Ivan, thank you for being available to talk on your short and busy Israel tour. I wish you all much success and hope to hear the ground-breaking Alta Capella Ensemble here in Israel again soon.