Everybody remembers the first time they met Joshua Bell. And every memory is the same.
My cousin in Kalamazoo, Michigan, met him when he was 16: "Totally open guy, like he's been your best friend for many years." A concert agent met him in Hong Kong when he was in his late 20s: "He looked like he was a teenager, wonderful to be with. And one helluva fiddler."
This writer met him first in his favourite delicatessen-restaurant in New York near his Gramercy Park home about 10 years ago. He resembled a kid just out of his 20s. He talked about music like he talked about food, and I asked him -- off the record -- why everybody in the music business or the delicatessen business thought he was an ordinary American guy -- who happened to be one of the greatest fiddlers of his generation.
Perhaps Joshua (nobody calls him Mister Bell) really is an all-American guy. He comes from the all-American state of Indiana (better known for basketball), he grew up playing tennis and basketball and (still) video games. His genius was discovered at an early age, but he never called himself a genius. During his teens, he played that old potboiler, Max Bruch's Violin Concerto. And that is still what he plays this year.
He performed it in New York earlier this month at the Mostly Mozart Festival, where I heard him the other night, playing with a richness of sound on his Stradivarius that he had never had before.
And he'll be playing the Bruch Violin Concerto again at Bangkok's Thailand Cultural Centre on Sept 4 along with another work by Pablo Sarasate. And that was how we began our conversation the day after his New York performance. This was a telephone interview, yet his vocal enthusiasm was like the crescendo on his 300-year-old violin.
"Yes, the Bruch Concerto is still one of my favourites after all these years. And if people in Thailand don't know it yet, I think the experience will be glorious," he said.
"How should you hear it? Music is abstract. The first movement is passion and love. You can immediately relate to it. The second movement is absolutely gorgeous, one of the most beautiful ever written. As for the finale, Bruch wrote something which is bombastic, fun. And that's the inevitable effect on listeners.
"Listeners should let their imaginations run wild.
"Now the Sarasate piece is different. Not that the Bruch is easy, but I'll be playing one of the most technically difficult works ever written for a violin, the gypsy songs by Sarasate.
"Pablo Sarasate was one of the greatest violinists in the history of music, actually a late 19th-century rock star. It's a show piece, pure and simple. It's for any violinist to show off. Somehow, I have to play a pizzicato melody with one hand, another melody with my right hand….oh, so many problems. But Sarasate was Spanish, so he knew his gypsy folk music, but he improvises it! The music has a jazz technique. He reshapes every measure of the music. It's like fireworks."
Unlike other violinists who experiment and play the most dissonant sounds happily, Joshua Bell confesses to having known his favourite music since his debut at the age of 14. And he sticks to music which gives him the most delight. Here, in fact, are his rules:
"It must be lyrical. It must be melodic. I have never played the Alban Berg Violin Concerto, and when I play 20th or 21st century music, it must have a classical structure, it must have a symmetry, it must have melody."
Not that he avoids modern composers. In fact, John Corigliano wrote the music for the movie The Red Violin especially for the violinist. British composer Nicholas Maw's Violin Concerto was also composed for Joshua Bell. So one wants to know: Just what is the relationship between composer and soloist?
"First, the composer is going to base his music on what he believes I will like. And I would only go to a composer if I had a good idea of his styles, whether they would suit me. Second, throughout history, from Brahms -- when virtuosity was so important -- composers and musicians conferred essentially on technical matters. The soloist might show the composer how to approach a certain effect, the composer might query what the most comfortable way is to play certain measures."
A few years ago, Joshua Bell's life veered into another direction, though perhaps an inevitable one. He became the music director/conductor of the great British orchestra Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which had been conducted by Sir Neville Marriner (just as Joshua Bell is known to non-concert goers with The Red Violin, Sir Neville was known for conducting the score for Amadeus).
So how does a fiddler turn into a conductor? Does he study arm movements, fingers, body language? None of the above?
"It seemed natural," he says. "These days I give about 150 concerts a year, so over the past three decades I've worked with literally thousands of conductors. First, I've learned unconsciously and consciously from them. Second, I frequently lead older music, say before Beethoven, when there was no such thing as a conductor. Instead, the First Chair violinist [who would be me] was known as the concert master, because he or she would lead the orchestra while playing. And it's more than simply starting and ending the piece. The concert master must bring out all the nuances, the changes, while fiddling at the same time. So, from all these experiences, conducting became natural….almost organic."
Before any more questions, Joshua Bell abruptly brought up Thailand itself.
"You have no idea how excited I am to be performing here. Thai art, Thai culture and -- above all -- Thai food is something which I'm looking forward to."
He has been excited about many things since growing up around Indiana University, where his father taught psychology, and where his mother, a therapist, was -- and is -- a typical Jewish mother! Both were proud of their son, but even when his most famous teacher, Josef Gingold, took him under his wings, he was a "typical" kid with an "untypical" talent.
With him to Thailand Bell will bring his beloved, famed Stradivarius violin, which had been played by some of the most eminent violinists since 1713, during Antonius Stradivarius' "Golden Period". Its history is actually quirky. Twice it had been stolen from virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman. The second time, the thief confessed to the act on his deathbed.
I bring up a theory to Joshua Bell, that pianists and pianos are physically separate outside of fingers and feet. But violinists and violins must embrace each to the body like lovers.
"Oh," Joshua laughs, "yes, the Strad is part of my body." (Though he had told another writer: "I don't take my violin to bed with me.")
"Actually it's my voice. I'm far more comfortable with the voice of this Strad than my own voice.
"On the other hand, this instrument changes every day. How I handle it, how the strings react. Sometimes it's part of me, it makes whatever voice I can idealise. Other times, I have to work hard to get it to do what I want. I've had this instrument for 17 years, so it's less like a romantic affair than a marriage."
The fiddler excuses himself. He has to do a live radio interview, but is ready to take one more question.
"Thai parents who have a talented musician child need…."
"The right teacher!" he says. "Get a teacher where the child feels comfortable, where he or she feels like each lesson is not simply a lesson. Where it's a new experience.
"The next thing. Don't let this kid be attached to those lessons, or that instrument. Make sure he's balanced, into sports, into learning, into the world."
For a 50-year-old fiddler in the halcyon of great fiddlers, whose home still has a room devoted to video games, Joshua Bell knows that all work and all playing has made him a rare delightful artist.
"Joshua Bell Plays Max Bruch Violin Concerto And Sarasate"
Tuesday, Sept 4, 8pm at Thailand Cultural Centre, Main Hall
Ticket prices: 800, 2,000, 3,500, 5,000 baht
20% off for Bangkok Bank Credit Cards (Visa and MasterCard)
50% for Students (show student ID)
Book your tickets at
ThaiTicketMajor Tel: 02-262-3456 thaiticketmajor.com
BSOF Office Tel: 02 255 6617-18 bangkoksymphony.org fb:royalbangkoksymphony
