TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF

Sarah Chang gives the world premiere performance of Fil Eisler’s Violin Concerto For J.E. on 27 April 2019 at the University of California’s Royce Hall. The work was commissioned by the American Youth Symphony as part of the Korngold Commission Project and conducted by Carlos Izcaray

ALBERTO SANTILLAN

‘As a young violinist I wanted to play Brahms so much, but this wasn’t allowed until I was more mature. He was like forbidden fruit.’ Sarah Chang is speaking to me at a café down the road from London’s Cadogan Hall on the eve of a rare recital appearance in which she will play sonatas by Bartók, Franck and her beloved Brahms with regular duo pianist Ashley Wass. ‘I learnt the Brahms Concerto when I was around eight or nine, but nobody would programme it, as no one wants to see an eight-year-old playing Brahms! So instead I did a whole bunch of Paganini, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius.’

Listening to the former child prodigy speak so matter-of-factly about performing the great Romantic concertos of the violin repertoire before she hit double figures is both fascinating and a little unsettling: fascinating, because her experience of performing with the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra bears no resemblance to the formative years of the average primary school child; unsettling, because the entirely necessary student–mentor relationship with such musical giants as Isaac Stern and Kurt Masur that characterised her early career might easily have made unfeasible the transition from child star to independently minded adult.

‘BEING SELECTIVE DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN LESS WORK! INSTEAD YOU TAKE THE PASSION PROJECTS – AND ALTHOUGH I’M JUST AS BUSY, THESE MAKE ME SO MUCH HAPPIER’

Even now, almost 30 years since her professional debut at the age of eight, she refers several times to the ‘expectation’ of concert promoters that she continue performing the standard concerto repertoire. Of tomorrow’s concert, her single London date of 2019, she enthuses, ‘This is a real treat for me, because I rarely get to do a recital! The concerto repertoire is what I grew up with, so that’s the way my schedule has always been structured.’

Her schedule is certainly formidable and clearly only possible by living a highly ordered and disciplined life – evident in everything from a practice regime that still includes rigorous scales and arpeggios on a daily basis, to her glamorous, not-a-hair-out-of-place persona, both on and off stage. ‘I still love the performance and rehearsal aspect of what I do,’ she explains, ‘as every week I’ll be working with a different conductor and a different group of musicians.’ She pauses. ‘What I don’t love any more is the endless flying and the airports and, frankly, missing family life back home. When you’re starting out and you’re in total high gear, every decision you make is about your career. After 20 or 30 years you have to sit back and think of the personal – family and friendships and memories that help you grow as a person.’

Chang performs at the 1993 United Nations Day Concert in New York under conductor Kurt Masur

MAIN IMAGE MAMORU HORI. CIRCLE IMAGE EVAN SCHNEIDER / UNITED NATIONS

It’s this capacity for clear-sighted self-examination, I suspect, that allowed Chang to transition so successfully into an artistically mature adult performer, and that now – despite the vestiges of control and obligation still evident in her concert schedule – drives her experimental forays.

‘Around five years ago, I sat my management team down and said I wanted to be a little more selective in my career,’ she says. ‘But being selective doesn’t necessarily mean less work! Instead, you take the passion projects which are either repertoire- or conductor-driven, and although I’m just as busy, these make me so much happier.’

Chang performs Vivaldi and Piazzolla with NHK Symphony Orchestra musicians in Kyoto Concert Hall. She will take the same paired-down programme on tour to China in December

KYOTO CONCERT HALL

‘LOOKING AT THE COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS OF A NEW WORK MAKES YOU RE-EVALUATE THE OLDER WORKS YOU HAVE ALWAYS PERFORMED’

Her happiness is evident in the warmth with which she speaks about two projects in particular from her current season: her premiere in April of this year of a new violin concerto by contemporary composer Fil Eisler with the American Youth Symphony, and her paireddown chamber tour to China, due to take place in December. ‘It’s a really musically fulfilling season for me, and I am very grateful for that,’ she enthuses during our London conversation in February. ‘Fil is an unbelievably talented Hollywood composer – he’s composed the soundtracks for television shows Empire and Revenge – but this is his first work for violin, so we are collaborating closely. I’m loving the process as there’s so much give and take. In the past, composers have written a work for me and simply sent the finished score, but Fil writes a few things and then sends them to me to see if they work and how I feel about them.’ When I speak to Chang later in the year, after the premiere, she has nothing but praise for the finished work. ‘Called For J.E., the concerto is based on the memories of Fil’s grandmother, who grew up during the First World War,’ she explains. ‘The music is so romantic and lush and incredibly accessible.

But when it comes to technical aspects, Fil has thrown in the whole kitchen sink. In the third movement everything is in demisemiquavers and semiquavers (s) – he hasn’t given me a moment to breathe! But it’s a brilliant piece and I find it thrilling to play. You really feel as if you have experienced an entire movie when listening to it.’ Indeed, the concerto has prompted Chang to think about her ‘bread-and-butter’ repertoire in new and exciting ways. This is particularly interesting in the case of a musician who learnt much of the central violin canon during her childhood.

‘Looking at the compositional process of a new work makes you re-evaluate the older works you have always performed. You realise that there are no throwaway notes. As a student you learn each piece because your teacher tells you to learn it; you play the solo part well without really thinking about how that connects with the orchestral part.

Performing Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra in May 2015

JOHN LACKO

‘When you learn something as a child it becomes embedded in your head, and at times that’s great because you can rely on that knowledge as being pretty much unshakeable. But there are also times when you want to change things – to approach them from a fresh perspective. Learning Fil’s piece in the context of the whole musical score is so different from the way I still so clearly remember learning the Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Sibelius concertos, and now I’m trying to adopt that different way of thinking in those works too. I have known them for 30 years, but I’m travelling with the scores and still discovering new things in the orchestral texture. These little things remind you, “Hey, I’m not done learning yet!”’

So taken is Chang with the collaborative process that led to the Eisler premiere that she is considering recording the work – an important development, bearing in mind the absence of a new Sarah Chang album for the past ten years.

‘I’ve made 20-plus records covering all the major repertoire so I no longer feel the need to be cranking out one or two CDs every year just for the sake of it,’ she says. ‘And given that the recording landscape has changed so much, even in the past two years, I want every album I make to have something to say. The world doesn’t need another Four Seasons record. Of course, I did make one!’ she admits, laughing. ‘Because you can’t not do it – so I eventually had to cave in.’

Talk of Vivaldi leads neatly to Chang’s forthcoming tour to China (on 6, 8 and 11 December in Shenzhen, Nanjing and Shanghai respectively), during which she will perform a programme combining Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires in a reduced arrangement featuring just five fellow performers: violinists Adam Millstein and Nigel Armstrong, violist Erwan Richard, cellist Matthew Zalkind and double bassist Nathan Farrington.

The project taps into Chang’s desire to take on more chamber music, and she readily admits that the sextet format involves significantly fewer players than the composers intended for their works. ‘I believe Piazzolla asks for 15 players in his score,’ she says. ‘He is very specific about his instrumentation, but I wanted the performance to be as much like chamber music as possible. For these performances, I have selected people who I’ve developed a musical connection with over the years – and I feel we have a real spark on stage. We have performed this programme in America and Japan in the past, and it works so well! Especially with a tight-knit, small group, there is so much flexibility. I really feel that you can bob and weave, and that rubato and nuances of phrasing become much more possible.’

CHANG ON HER VIOLIN

I found my 1717 Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ through Isaac Stern when I was 14 years old and finally able to switch to a full-size violin. I had been coached by Mr Stern since I was six, so he had seen me grow up and knew my playing well. He put the word out for me, and literally overnight there were around six Strads and four ‘del Gesù’ violins flown to New York from all over the world. He made a call so that we were able to take the instruments – with the help of four bodyguards – to Carnegie Hall to try them out. As we set off, he went over to his safe – basically, this enormous walk-in space where he kept all his instruments and bows – and grabbed a violin case. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but he told me he had a violin that he thought might suit me. At Carnegie Hall we spent about two hours playing the violins on stage, and in the end we both agreed that the best instrument was the ‘del Gesù’ that Mr Stern had pulled from his safe!

From that very first day I have always loved this instrument – its incredible power and drama. When I was 14, it might have been slightly big for me, but I’ve grown into it. This violin will do whatever I need it to do, but it is temperamental and particularly reactive to changes in temperature and humidity. If, for example, I’m travelling from New York to Aspen, within about a day the violin will tell me it’s not happy, so I have to ask the hotel concierge to send a humidifier to my room. But I imagine it’s very similar to taking care of your voice as a singer. This instrument has been so good to me and I’m so grateful, because, when you think about it, this violin is over 300 years old. It has outlived all of its previous owners and it’s going to outlive me! For that reason I try to keep it in the same amazing mint condition it was in when Mr Stern first handed it to me.

The programme also reflects Chang’s encounter with musical styles outside the classical realm when performing in Buenos Aires with the city’s philharmonic orchestra several years ago. While there she took part in a television series for CNN called Fusion Journeys, which saw her performing in clubs with an authentic tango band. ‘Much of what they do is improvised, which is not what I do at all! It’s so frightening for a classically trained musician to be confronted with that. I learnt so much from these musicians, and performing Piazzolla seemed like a natural move.’

An unshakeable bond: Chang and her dog Chewie

NICOLE FISCHER

‘WHILE TRAVELLING FROM PRAGUE TO JAPAN, INSTEAD OF GOING DIRECT I WENT HOME TO THE US FOR A DAY JUST TO CUDDLE MY PUPPY’

Such musical growth – moving from the larger concerto repertoire towards more intimate, malleable and instinctive playing – does not necessarily mean that Chang is rejecting the lessons of her youth. Far from it. Her conversation is peppered with references to her formative mentors, and the teachings that she still applies to her playing today. It is clear when we speak before her London concert that ‘Maestro Masur’ – who as New York Philharmonic director forbade her to perform the Brahms Violin Concerto for so many years – remains foremost in her mind. His is the guiding hand over a performance of Brahms’s Third Violin Sonata the following evening, which showcases clarity, heft and simmering passion.

When Masur finally allowed Chang to perform the Brahms Concerto, he spent six hours working with her on a completely new and unmarked score – one free of ‘the last 20 years’ of her work on the piece. ‘He had this really particular Germanic way that he wanted Brahms to be played, and I apply that to all Brahms now,’ she reveals. ‘The last time I saw him was in 2012 for his 85th birthday concert in Leipzig. He asked me to play a Brahms sonata, and afterwards he came on stage to give me a kiss, whispering in my ear, “Too fast, always too fast!” Every time I play Brahms he’s there.’

She speaks in equally reverent tones about ‘Mr Stern’, for whom she first played as part of Dorothy DeLay’s Juilliard School class at the age of six, and who later united the then 14-year-old Chang with the 1717 Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin that she still performs on to this day (see box, page 34). Following their initial encounter, Stern asked her to play to him ‘every few weeks or months, and it grew into a wonderful relationship where he became a mentor, a teacher and an adviser’.

‘He was tough – I’m not going to sugar-coat that – but always fair,’ she remembers. ‘I had the utmost respect for him.

He was what I needed at the time because when you’re starting your career so early and everyone is fawning over the latest child prodigy, and you’re suddenly giving all these big concerts and recording like crazy, your head is in the clouds. So he was the one to bring me down to earth, telling me not to forget the basics and to practise my scales every day. I remember he once asked me to play a simple C major scale, and afterwards he said, “Your C was in tune, but everything else was out.” I adored him for it, as I needed that in my life!’

Now, just as then, balance remains the key to Chang’s happiness and fulfilment. But as an adult the onus is on her (rather than her mentors) to strike that delicate equilibrium between the private and the professional. ‘Right now I have a dog [her much-loved Chewie] – and I am doing these insane trips. A little while ago, I was travelling from Prague to Japan to perform in concerts, and instead of going direct I went home to the US for a day just to cuddle my puppy. Geographically that made no sense, but you have to do what you have to do to keep yourself sane. Then the other day I went skydiving, which is something I have wanted to do for ever, and it was the most amazing thing.

I’m riding high!’

She becomes thoughtful. ‘In the end, it won’t be about whether I did 3,000 concerts as opposed to 3,200. I want to know that I have given my absolute best, and the whole of myself, during every performance. The only way to do that is to be genuinely healthy in both your professional and personal being.’ It’s a philosophy to live by.