A MATTER OF TIME

Pauline Harding visits Dallas, Texas, to chat with violinist– violist Pinchas Zukerman about his illustrious past, a new masterclass series at Meadows School of the Arts, and his hopes for the future of technology in string teaching

Flying to Dallas, Texas, to meet Pinchas Zukerman in February feels akin to stepping into a history book. Here, in a part of the US shaped by oil-tycoon wealth and the cowboys of the Wild West, I have to blink twice as he emerges from his hotel, eyes sparkling above a blue surgical face mask, with a violin–viola case slung over his shoulder. This is a man whom I first heard perform when I was a toddler in the 1980s, when my parents played me videotapes of his duets with the equally esteemed violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Zukerman with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra in 2021

BARCELONA PHOTO MAY ZIRCUS. MASTERCLASS PHOTO PAULINE HARDING

Now here he is, standing next to me as we prepare to share a ride to Meadows School of the Arts at Dallas’s Southern Methodist University (SMU), courtesy of the school’s chair of strings and director of chamber music, Aaron Boyd. Zukerman will be resuming masterclasses, chamber music projects and concerts that kicked off in November 2021 and are set to continue with his week-long termly visits to the school over the next two to three years, alongside his 2021–3 partnership with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO).

Sharing a car with this Israeli–American legend is surreal. Within moments he has mocked my British accent (the word ‘banana’ seems to delight him particularly) and drifted unprompted back into the past. He tells us about the time when Jacqueline du Pré invited him for dinner and served him lobster, after he had jokingly requested it – not a kosher choice for a Jewish man prohibited from eating shellfish. He reminisces about Gregor Piatigorsky joining him and colleagues including Daniel Barenboim and Perlman to play some chamber music and on hearing them saying, ‘You play good! I better practise.’ A sudden burst of acceleration from Boyd’s Tesla, coupled with jetlag, adds to the sense that I am in a time capsule. As I wait with Zukerman in Boyd’s teaching studio at SMU before the masterclasses begin, I feel as though he could have stepped out of one of the framed images of history’s famous violinists that adorn the walls.

Zukerman and assistant Wu Jie give student Fedor Malykhin a masterclass in SMU’s Caruth Auditorium

CREDIT

Zukerman’s reputation, of course, comes principally from his solo and chamber work on the violin and the viola.

The 74-year-old was initially talent-spotted in 1962, aged around 13, by violinist Isaac Stern and cellist Pablo Casals when they were visiting Tel Aviv, where Zukerman was studying the violin with Ilona Feher at what is now the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music. Stern was instrumental in supporting Zukerman’s passage to the US, where he helped the young musician to enrol in Ivan Galamian’s class at the Juilliard School in New York, aged 14. By the close of 1969, Zukerman had made two impressive debut recordings: one of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra and Antal Doráti; the other of the Mendelssohn E minor Concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein. His more than 130 recordings boast collaborations with Perlman, du Pré, Barenboim, Stern, cellist Leonard Rose and many others, usually as a player but also as a conductor. His accolades include two Grammys, twenty-one Grammy nominations, a US national medal for his role in the arts (presented to him in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan; an award that later was named the National Medal of Arts) and the inaugural Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence (2002).

It is a testament to his passion for teaching that despite a hectic international concert and recording schedule Zukerman still finds the time to do it. Through his Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), New York, he has since 1993 taught a class of up to ten talented young students each academic year, to supplement their weekly lessons with Patinka Kopec. In 1999 he founded the Young Artists Program at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, during his tenure as music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra (1999–2015), and in 2006–7 he served as a mentor with the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. He has also established a number of other teaching projects. It was he who approached SMU to find out about teaching opportunities when his residency with the DSO was confirmed, not the other way round. Eventually he hopes to coach SMU’s students even between masterclasses – as he does at MSM – by establishing long-distance-learning video-call facilities at the school. Zukerman has advocated long-distance learning since long before the pandemic made it a music-teaching norm. In 1994 he and some colleagues at MSM joined an online demonstration about videoconferencing – atechnology that failed to take off when it was introduced in the 1970s but that gained a second wind in the 1990s. This demonstration, says Zukerman, blew him away. ‘When I saw it, I went to Mars. I was thinking, “Oh my God. I’ve seen the future.” For me, that opened up a whole new, incredible book.’ He co-founded a distance-learning company, Mastervision International Ltd, and in 1996 worked with MSM to facilitate long-distance learning via video link. Nevertheless, looking back, he acknowledges that at that time, ‘Nobody wanted to do it and they didn’t understand it, because it went through a machine. Now what’s happened, because of Covid, is that we have really practised what technology should do.’

Zukerman with Isaac Stern at the 2001 Miyazaki International Music Festival, Japan

Zukerman has collaborated repeatedly with some of the greatest classical musicians of the past century, including cellists Jacqueline du Pré and Leonard Rose, pianist– conductor Daniel Barenboim, and violinists Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman

STERN AND ZUKERMAN PHOTO K MIURA

ZUKERMAN HAS ADVOCATED LONG-DISTA NCE LEARNING SINCE LONG BEFORE THE PANDEMIC MADE IT A MUSIC-TE ACHING NORM

ZUKERMAN’S TEACHING A PPROACH IS WARM AND HUMOROUS, BUT ALSO CONSTRUCTIVE AND HONEST

This change, in combination with Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink project to develop superfast satellite internet worldwide, has renewed his enthusiasm for long-distance learning initiatives. Starlink access is currently limited but should improve dramatically as its number of low-orbit satellites increases from 2,000–3,000 to Musk’s eventual target of 42,000. ‘It’s amazing, what is happening and what’s going to happen,’ says Zukerman. ‘Already there’s a SpaceX satellite for home use that you can put up on your roof. And Mr Musk has done it in remote places where there’s nothing. It’s changed everything.’ When it comes to music, he enthuses, its lowlatency connection will enable teaching and chamber music collaborations via video link anywhere in the world, without time lag. While little progress has been made with this project so far at SMU, says Boyd, ‘Pinchas is determined’ to change that.

Despite his ambitions, Zukerman emphasises that the internet should never replace live events, only supplement them. Certainly, after so much pandemic-induced computer contact and isolation from the ‘real’ world, I am relieved to see him stride charismatically on stage in person at SMU rather than appearing on a computer screen. On the two days of masterclasses that I observe in Dallas, he coaches three twenty-something violinists, each of them twice. Two of these he first taught at SMU in November, and all have received interim coaching by Zukerman’s teaching assistant, Wu Jie.

Giving a lesson in Aaron Boyd’s SMU studio, surrounded by framed photos of famous players from the past

First up is Valory Hight, with Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ Sonata; then there’s Fedor Malykhin with the Brahms Concerto; and finally comes Katya Schane, with Ysaÿe’s Violin Sonata no.2.

Zukerman’s approach is warm and humorous, but also constructive and honest. He is clearly proud of the progress that the first two have made. ‘That boy that played Brahms, you couldn’t believe what that sounded like,’ he tells me in between classes. ‘There was nothing before. Nothing! The one who played the Beethoven: last time, she played Mozart –’ he breaks off to mime playing a miniature violin. ‘You can’t make a sound, you don’t know what you’re doing! But now it’s at least 70 per cent better. Imagine a year from now.’

ZUKERMAN PHOTO MAY ZIRCUS. TEACHING PHOTO AARON BOYD

Frequently he stops the students to demonstrate on his own violin, playing with an ease and gorgeous tone that illustrate everything he says with inspirational clarity. Some students are easier to crack than others: the first, Hight, laughs, listens and learns with great naturality. With Zukerman’s encouragement and cries of, ‘Play to the exit sign!’, ‘There’s no such thing as an accompaniment – play out!’ and ‘Use more bows than Beethoven says. He didn’t have to perform it. Besides, he was deaf!’ her sound, timid at first, starts to sing and project.

‘THESE STUDENTS AND YOUNG PROFESSIONA LS, SOME OF THEM HAVE STUDIED WITH ALL THESE FA MOUS PEOPLE IN THIS METHOD AND THAT METHOD. I THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW’

He accuses her of playing with too much Mozartian niceness and pushes her to play with more grit; to see the third and seventh bars of each phrase as focal points; and to think of the musical big picture rather than technical minutiae. Overall, he frees her up and boosts her confidence. It is quite a different matter for her poor pianist, whom he berates impatiently for rushing, playing overbearingly and using too much pedal.

When Hight returns a few days later to play in a bigger space at SMU, with a public audience, Zukerman has to reinforce some of the same ideas, showing how easily a student can default to old habits and the importance, for teachers, of patience and persistence. ‘You just have to repeat it over and over again,’ he tells me. ‘That’s what Galamian did.’ When Hight explains that she is feeling nervous, Zukerman replies, ‘Nerves are for dark rooms and horror movies.’ The feeling that we have on stage, he says, is only of flowing adrenaline.

‘The heart starts pumping blood a lot faster. So how do we control that? Slow bow. S-L-O-W bow. And you know what? It goes away in no time at all.’

It takes the second student, Malykhin (another one clearly affected by ‘fast-pumping blood’), some time to relax into a smile, but Zukerman’s patient charm gradually works on him too. ‘The bow arm is your bank account!’ Zukerman tells him.

‘If it sounds good, you make more money.’ He zones in on bowing, timing and attack, and advises him to practise the Galamian scale system daily. Improvement here, too, is fast and noticeable.

Of the three, it is Schane who has the roughest ride, when Zukerman cuts short her Ysaÿe to guide her through a series of technical exercises. ‘These students and young professionals, some of them have studied with all these famous people in this method and that method,’ he tells me later. ‘I throw it out the window. I say, “Open strings.” They say, “What do you mean, open strings?” “Open strings! Am I speaking English, or what?”’ As a consequence we hear no more Ysaÿe this week – only open strings, martelé string-crossings, collé strokes at the heel and Kreutzer’s Etude no.2. Zukerman recommends that she and any other violinists in the audience loosen up by practising The Yost System for Violin, and play while standing on a chair to ensure stability and minimal body movement. ‘If you have the posture, the bow will travel better automatically,’ he explains. ‘It’s like cars. If you have the four tyres working properly with the right amount of weight, the car will go a lot smoother.’ At moments when Schane begins to look upset, Zukerman leaps in with praise, monitoring not only her technique but also her psyche. ‘It’s like learning how to brush your teeth,’ he later tells me. ‘Do you go like this? Do you go like that? You go first this way, then you do a little bit here, and a little bit over here. You can’t do it all at once.’

Rehearsing with the English Chamber Orchestra in 2022

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COLIN SHEEN

HE SWITCHES IN AN INSTANT BETWEEN TALK OF FUTURISTIC SATELLITES AND HIS MEMORIES OF LONG-DE A D LEGENDS

TOP PHOTO AARON BOYD. BOTTOM PHOTO COLIN SHEEN

Fine-tuning one’s sound and approach, Zukerman emphasises, takes years of efficient, focused work and determination from both student and teacher, with many ‘valleys and peaks’ – an idea that doesn’t always sit well with young players who want ‘a quick fix’.

This he understands, because he was once one of those young players himself and even spent his time at Galamian’s Meadowmount summer school as a teenager winding up other students rather than practising. ‘I used to go to a practice room, lie on the floor outside it and play what they were playing inside.’ It was only aged 16, on Galamian’s insistence, that he ‘got a little bit smarter’ and started to practise in four 50-minute bursts each morning, followed by a ‘50-minute hour’ in the late afternoon. ‘Now I practise properly,’ he says. ‘At home, I get up, have a coffee, take a shower and go into my room. I start playing scales in twos, fours, sixes, eights, sixteens, twenty-fours – at 60 to the quarter [q= 60]. The same thing over and over again. And I don’t like to play out of tune. I hate it!’ Even when he found himself ill with Covid for almost a month at the end of March 2020, isolated from other musicians unless he was teaching online, he still practised every day as he gazed out of his bedroom windows over the Hudson River and at the skyscrapers of the New York and New Jersey skylines, fine-tuning his scales and centuries-old music by Bach.

This mixture of new and old defines much of what Zukerman does. He plays his 1742 ‘Dushkin’ Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin and his 17th-century composite Guarneri viola (ribs and back by Andrea Guarneri; top by Giuseppe Guarneri ‘filius Andreae’) with modern bows made by Lee Guthrie (based in Hudson, Wisconsin); and on both the violin and the viola he uses the same brand of strings – Thomastik Vision Solo – that he first tried in 1972. In conversation, he leaps in tangents that bridge past, present and future in a mind-boggling blur, switching in an instant between talk of futuristic satellites and his memories of long-dead legends. When I ask him if there is an overarching piece of wisdom that he has taken from those musicians, he pauses for a moment. ‘All those people, the ones that I see in my head, they would talk about “honesty”,’ he replies; ‘honesty about what you do, about how you do it. Keep looking at the score and just keep your eyes and ears open.’ It is clear from watching him teach that he is now working to instil that same timeless value into new generations of musicians.