VADIM GLUZMAN

INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD

TOP PHOTO MARCO BORGGREVE. MAIN PHOTO MARTIN NAGORNI

When I was three, my family moved from Ukraine to Riga, Latvia. Although we emigrated to Israel when I was 16 I still have many friends in Riga and often go back to the city to perform - I have a deep nostalgia for the land where I grew up. As soon as I heard Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ First Violin Concerto ‘Distant Light’, I fell in love. It’s an extraordinary work, full of the melodies of the Latvian language and the music I associate with my childhood - which, for everyone, embodies a special place of security.

Vasks never quotes directly from any particular piece, but everything he writes is imbued with the spirit of Latvian folk music. Singing is a tremendously important aspect of the culture and we always went to the Latvian Song and Dance Festival, where choirs from almost every village in the country come to perform. The music is very gentle and lyrical, and at the same time projects an air of national pride. It’s a quality I can hear so much in ‘Distant Light’: I almost hear words when I play it. There are also elements where Vasks imitates the rhythms of dance.rhythms or dance.

He’s by no means a political person but he’s very proud of the culture he comes from, and this music is filled with a feeling of hope. The title ‘Distant Light’ could refer to unobtainable dreams, or ones that can finally be attained; also the nostalgic feeling of a long-departed love. It reminds me of the emotions I felt when I arrived in Israel for the first time, as if I were finally finding my homeland - as well as everything that had come before.

In the 1970s the Soviet regime was trying to eliminate the national identities of its various states by resettling Russian- speaking families, like mine, in places like Latvia. I had a happy childhood there but there was always a feeling of our being ‘imported goods’. It was similar for Vasks, who was the son of a Baptist pastor living under an atheistic regime. One consequence for him was to be denied entry to the Latvian Academy of Music; instead he had to study in Vilnius, almost 200 miles away in Lithuania. So maybe both of us understand this feeling of being strangers in a strange land, yet also having a strong affinity with the Latvian national culture.

Vasks and Gluzman discuss the concerto at a recording in Helsinki in April 2018

When I was rehearsing ‘Distant Light’ for the first time I met with Vasks at his home. He talks constantly about colours and emotions, about searching for oneself and one’s place in the world, and how people relate to the power of nature. At the same time he’s a very spiritual person who often prefers to express himself visually: at one point, rather than explain what he meant, he took me by the hand and led me to a small lake near a forest by his house. ‘Here, this is my music, ’ he would say as we sat gazing at the water, both understanding each other. In each and every bar I can hear how his music connects not only with the Latvian music traditions but also to the country itself.

The concerto is quite difficult technically: there are three cadenzas, one of them much longer than the others, and all three require emotional and technical virtuosity. It’s one of the very few concertos that make me feel drained once I leave the stage - although I feel fulfilled at the same time! It requires everything in my being, emotionally and physically. For that reason I’ve never played an encore after the concerto.

As we near the 2020s there is a growing consensus among industries at every level that our planet’s diminishing resources must be conserved and protected. The string world is no different and, particularly in the realm of stringed instrument accessories, intrepid inventors and entrepreneurs are finding ingenious solutions to the problem of disappearing traditional supplies.

The Strads2019 Accessories supplement investigates just some of these areas. On page 4 we explore the expanding sphere of carbon fibre bows - increasingly sophisticated alternatives to traditional pernambuco - and review some of the leading competitors in this field. On page 14 we take a look at the new range of sustainable ‘densified’ woods which are being used to make fingerboards, tailpieces and tuning pegs in place of endangered tropical hardwoods. Then, on page 36 we examine developments in the world of synthetic bow hair - still a work in progress, perhaps, but an intriguing and colourful prospect for the future.

Elsewhere in the publication we test an exciting new range of electric instruments (page 20), survey the leading products available for suppressing double bass wolf notes (page 30) and weigh up the benefits of luthiers using 3D scanning and CNC modelling for constructing instrument copies (page 40).

Charlotte Smitheditor Email me at @thestrad.comor tweet @TheStradMag