THE MAN WITH THE BLUE VIOLIN

Czech violinist Pavel Šporcl is a superstar in his own country but something of a well-kept secret elsewhere. He speaks to Amanda Holloway about his varied career, his world premiere recording of countryman Jan Kubelík’s First Concerto, and his unusual instrument

FRANTISE KORTMANN

Pavel Šporcl is musical royalty in the Czech Republic. He is the latest in a line of Czech virtuoso violinists dating back to the 19th century, with the technique to tackle showstoppers from Wieniawski to Paganini. He’s one of the best violinists you may never have seen on a concert stage, unless you’re lucky enough to live in the Czech Republic. Outside his homeland, Šporcl (pronounced Shportzl) is known for his recordings on Supraphon, Universal Music and now Hänssler, with CD sales currently numbering around a quarter of a million. Whether his fingers are burning through a Paganini variation or combining muscle and melody in the Mendelssohn Concerto, Šporcl brings refreshing, old-fashioned brio to familiar repertoire.

The main fact most people know about Šporcl is that he plays a blue violin. It has become his trademark, but it’s no gimmick – it was crafted by the country’s top maker, Jan Špidlen, and has the sweetness and depth of an old Italian instrument.

When we meet on Zoom, Šporcl has just finished a three-hour practice session to prepare for a concert tour featuring Jan Kubelík’s First Violin Concerto, whose world premiere recording is featured on the violinist’s most recent Hänssler album, Homage to Jan Kubelík. Šporcl is an assured performer with quicksilver fingers and nerves of steel, but even he is finding Kubelík’s writing difficult. ‘He must have had a very special technique and hands that are different from mine. It’s not like any other violin piece, there are so many chords and 5ths and the violin has no chance to relax during the 35 minutes. I am struggling a lot!’ Šporcl is fiercely proud of Kubelík, a superstar violinist before the First World War who was referred to as ‘the new Paganini’. He sees parallels between himself and Kubelík: ‘He was a patriot, like me. He loved to travel, he loved to play – but he loved the place he came from and he helped many people with his own money, including the Czech Philharmonic. He was a deep-thinking musician, but he loved to smile and make jokes.’

Šporcl, too, is an amiable chap, with striking blue eyes, a red-gold ponytail and tiny treble-clef earrings. He radiates an optimism and enthusiasm for life that can be in short supply in the classical music world. He comes from the city of České Budějovice, the capital of the South Bohemian region, where the original Budweiser beer comes from. His father was an actor, his mother taught music and maths, and his older brother Petr is a ‘great cellist, one of the best in the Czech Republic’, says Šporcl.

From the age of five, Šporcl learnt the violin in his home town with a Mr Havel, who made lessons fun. In his teens he studied at both the conservatoire and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with the great Czech violin teacher Václav Snítil, who had been a pupil of another Czech master, Jaroslav Kocian. ‘Snítil gave me the foundation of my musicality,’ says Šporcl. ‘We did a lot of playing, a lot of talking about Czech composers and violinists, and, of course, a lot of talking about Bach!’ (Šporcl later recorded the complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, and toured them both alone and sometimes as part of a multiday concert cycle of the complete Bach violin works with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani.)

Czech virtuoso and composer Jan Kubelík

Šporcl performs Bach with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani

‘I WAS VERY LUCKY TO HAVE THE BEST TEACHERS IN THE WORLD’

In 1991, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Šporcl became one of the first Czech students to study abroad. ‘We changed from a communist country to a democratic country and I was very lucky. I was at exactly the stage of my life when I’d finished secondary school and could go to study in the US.’ He enrolled in the class of Eduard Schmieder at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and spent three years there before moving to Brooklyn College, New York, to study with Itzhak Perlman. ‘He was my biggest hero, so to meet him and to study with him was a dream come true!’ He met another great teacher, Dorothy DeLay, at Aspen, and she prepared him for study at the Juilliard School. ‘I was very lucky to have the best teachers in the world, and from each of them I took something,’ says Šporcl. ‘Snítil taught me how to see the overall structure of a piece; Schmieder made me look at every detail; Perlman showed me how every note should have a different colour, different bow speed and different vibrato. Miss DeLay and her assistant Masao Kawasaki taught me how to develop a solid tone with my bow stroke, to be able to be heard in the back row of Carnegie Hall.’ He takes me on an iPhone tour of his music room, where pictures of his teachers line the walls. ‘I like to think of their words when I’m practising!’

YOUNG PHOTOS COURTESY PAVEL ŠPORCL

(l–r) Šporcl with Itzhak Perlman (1995), Dorothy DeLay (1996), and Václav Snítil (1999)

What was it about this young Czech musician that interested these extraordinary teachers? Šporcl considers the question, then says, ‘I’ve always had very fast fingers, technique, but I think they liked my Eastern European background, my musicality and my thoughtfulness about music. I never thought about being famous or making a lot of money. The main thing was always that I play well.’

After two years in New York he returned to Prague. ‘I came back as a very serious musician, but when I went around playing concerts I thought it was a shame there weren’t young people in the audience. I wondered how I could show them that classical musicians are normal, fun people.’ Someone gave him a bandana to wear for a photoshoot in 1999, and he wore it regularly for the next seven years. ‘It was the perfect vehicle to show the people that a young man in a bandana can play classical music. I was everywhere on every TV show in the Czech Republic, everybody knew me when I walked on the street. I sold so many CDs, and through my concerts and workshops in schools everybody knew about classical music and the violin.’

‘BECAUSE I LIKE BLUE AND HAVE BLUE EYES, I SAID OK, MAKE ME A BLUE VIOLIN!’

Šporcl wasn’t the first young musician to challenge the image of a classical violinist – the irrepressible Nigel Kennedy, with his Aston Villa scarf slung under his unshaven chin, persuaded a generation of British children that playing the violin was cool. But Šporcl met resistance from the old guard when he appeared in his bandana. ‘So many colleagues, musicians and critics around the world were saying I was destroying classical music. I had to prove myself so many times. I didn’t want anyone to say, “He’s famous only because he has a bandana.”’ When critics threatened to stay away from his concerts, he’d say to them, ‘It’s your decision and I am sorry about it, but it is more important to me that, instead of you, 20 or 50 other people come and I can show them the beauty of classical music.’ Some promoters still associate him with his ‘bandana period’, which may explain why he still isn’t getting the dates he deserves outside the Czech Republic. ‘Maybe they were a little afraid of what might happen! But everybody has their destiny and I’m doing the best I can. I’ve played so many concerts but, of course, I’d like to play more in places like the UK and the US.’

Perhaps the world is starting to catch up. Already something of a regular with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Šporcl also played with the English Symphony Orchestra at Cadogan Hall in London a few months before Covid hit, prompting critic Guy Rickards to describe his performance as, ‘what may just be the finest live account of Mendelssohn’s E minor Concerto I have heard’ (Musical Opinion, June 2019). When we speak, Šporcl is due back in the UK in mid-October for performances of the Glazunov Concerto with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Robert Trevino. In the US, a Covid-postponed tour with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is planned, while a recent tour of California ended with reinvitations and a star turn at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. In Europe, performances in Germany earlier this year included a sold-out performance with the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra which received stellar reviews, including one in the Freies Wort newspaper which reads: ‘It has been a long time since the audience were as enthusiastic as at this concert […] Šporcl tore the audience from their seats, cheering.’

PERFORMANCE PHOTO JAROSLAV ELFMARK. SEATED PHOTO FRANTISE KORTMANN

In 2005 Šporcl broke new ground again when he commissioned a blue violin from leading Czech violin maker Špidlen. In May the previous year he had been invited to Italy, to the Amiata Summit, a violin makers’ conference where the future of the instrument was discussed and it was concluded that it isn’t possible to change the traditional design. ‘I said, “We are in the 21st century – why don’t you at least make it a different colour?”’ recalls Šporcl. ‘“And instead of the scroll, why don’t you make a skyscraper or something more modern?” They looked at me as if I was totally crazy!’ Afterwards, Špidlen said he had some designs sitting in a drawer and if Šporcl wanted a different colour – well, he was happy to give it a go. ‘He said, “What colour would you like?”’ remembers Šporcl. ‘The normal range of wood colour goes from yellow to red to dark brown, so our options were limited. We ruled out black, leaving green and blue. And because I like blue and have blue eyes, I said OK, make me a blue violin!’

Writing about the blue violin on his website, Špidlen says he made various innovations ‘not only for the sake [of ] the individual design but mainly for improvement of sound and stability of the instrument’. He modified the outline of the body with short corners and narrower and thinner ribs, and incorporated enlarged f-holes, an adjustable titanium screw inside the nose of the neck as insurance against malformation caused by changes in climate, carbon fibre reinforcement of the bass-bar, and an individual scroll design with an inlaid lead weight. The violin was constructed of maple and spruce that was around 50 years old, originating from Bosnia and the Dolomites respectively. The blue colour is painted rather than varnished. The integrity of the violin sound, as Šporcl demonstrates, is not compromised by the maker’s innovations. He has played only this violin since 2006 and it’s worn in places, but although Špidlen has offered to repaint it, Šporcl finds beauty in the areas where the patina is showing.

His instrument has become his USP – some newspapers now refer to him as Pavel Šporcl and his legendary blue violin. But did he ever wonder if it would prevent him from being taken seriously by major symphony orchestras? ‘I’m used to this kind of thinking since I was wearing the bandana. But actually nobody’s had any problems so far with the blue violin,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘I’m very happy to have this instrument because I can show that above all it’s a wonderful thing – I’ve had it 17 years and it has improved tremendously. I learnt in Italy that if you have a new violin and you want it to become the best, you have to play it all the time, as they did in the time of Stradivari and Guarneri. I’m still finding so much beauty in it, plus I can show the public that even such a traditional craft as violin making can do something different and modern.’

Šporcl’s blue violin, by leading Czech maker Jan Špidlen

Over the past two decades Šporcl has become a household name in his home country, with frequent performances on radio and television, his own show about music on children’s TV and a major documentary series about Czech violinists from Kubelík to Kocian, in which he tracks down the scenes of their triumphs from Europe to the United States. ‘My professor Vaclav Snítil talked a lot about these legends, his teachers, and I try to make the best advantage of my position to talk about Czech culture and to feature it in my concerts and recordings,’ says Šporcl. His album My Violin Legends, recorded in 2013, features works composed by great Czech violinists. His spectacular Paganini tribute album, Paganiniana, nominated for a 2022 ICMA award (solo instrument category), contains works by several Czech composers including Šporcl himself, who has written a set of fiendishly difficult variations for solo violin on the Czech national anthem, Where My Home Is.

‘I’ve written 50 compositions, including arrangements for my gypsy band, and pop and crossover songs, all of which have gone to the top of the Czech charts,’ claims Šporcl. His beautiful Christmas piece The Prayer can be heard on his crossover album with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Christmas on the Blue Violin, which in 2017 was the only classical recording to make the Czech year-end top ten bestsellers’ list covering all music genres. ‘Classical music is first in my heart as a style, but, of course, I don’t play only classical music,’ Šporcl reminds me. ‘My other dream was to play with a gypsy cimbalom band.’ He has recorded two energetic albums and racked up hundreds of concerts, the virtuosic Šporcl having the time of his life with the Gipsy Way Ensemble. ‘To have my own gypsy cimbalom band, as a classically trained white violinist, is a miracle. I love improvising, I love jazz too, and klezmer… that’s my other dream, to make a klezmer album.’

And why not? Not 50 yet, he’ll be playing the violin for many years to come. ‘Now I’m in the best shape of my life as a violinist, because my fingers are still very fast, and I’ve got enough experience to put it into the music,’ he says. ‘I think Nathan Milstein was still playing until he was 82. Heifetz was 80 or 79. So I still have a long way to go!’ Until then, he’ll be celebrating his 50th next year with a gala concert in the O2Arena in Prague, welcoming everyone from classical music fans to newcomers. ‘I want the audience to listen to good music and go away from the concert with a smile, feeling I have given them something nice. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 25 years.’ And long may that continue.