‘I WANT TO LIVE EVERY NOTE OF THE MUSIC’

The Russian-born UK-based violinist Alina Ibragimova is famed for her versatility and an intensely honest musical approach. She speaks to Jessica Duchen about her influences and plans for the future, including an increasing focus on playing–directing

When Alina Ibragimova was still a teenage student at the Yehudi Menuhin School, I was lucky enough to hear her at the Purcell Room in London. She gave an all-out, blood-and-guts performance of the Franck Violin Sonata that I’ve never forgotten. More than two decades later, the wellspring of impassioned musicality within this Russian-born violinist only seems to flow more strongly with the years.

There’s no excess or pretence about her interpretations: with total focus and commitment, she gives the music everything it needs to show it at its best. Ibragimova, who is 37, has never been one to sell out to diva-ishness or heavy-duty marketing. We meet near St Pancras railway station in London before she heads up to Newcastle for a week as player–director with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. She breezes in, a free spirit in jeans and sweatshirt, and sits down with her luggage and violin case containing the Anselmo Bellosio violin she has played for 18 years carefully placed beside her.

Although Ibragimova’s repertoire is broad and eclectic, ranging from Bach to Jörg Widmann, there are still plenty of pieces for her to tackle for the first time. Her newest venture is Bartók’s Violin Concerto no.1 (1907–8), which is still a rarity compared with its later sibling. For that we can blame its dedicatee, the violinist Stefi Geyer. Bartók gave her the work apparently in a ferment of unrequited love. She never performed it, but held on to the manuscript until her death; it was finally published in 1956. In the form of a rhapsody, with an eloquent slow first movement and extended Allegro giocoso second, it’s an unusual creation at the best of times.

‘It’s a piece that’s very much in its own world,’ Ibragimova says. She decided to learn it this season partly because she has a penchant for complete cycles: ‘I like to have an entire overview of a composer.’ She has often played Bartók’s Concerto no.2, as well as the Solo Sonata. ‘I’ve been wanting to learn the First Concerto for a few years and now finally I have a chance to do it.’ She performs it this month at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) conducted by Edward Gardner.

The challenges it poses won’t be fully clear to her until the first performance, she says. ‘I think that to get to know a piece 100 per cent, one has to play it in concert. For me, that’s always the case with any work. The audience has to be there for me to really understand it, because music is written to be shared and listened to together.

‘In a concert, something special always happens. You can practise and rehearse as much as you want, but the concert, for me, is always an experience that’s completely different and that you can’t quite predict. You can do your best to be ready for all situations, but ultimately, the beauty of that moment is that it’s unique. To know what happens to the music when it’s being played and listened to at that particular time and in that environment makes you understand it better.’

PHOTOS EVA VERMANDEL

‘THE AUDIENCE HAS TO BE THERE FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND A WORK, BECAUSE MUSIC IS WRITTEN TO BE SHARED’

With conductor Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic at the BBC Proms in 2018

BBC/CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

Covid-19, of course, robbed her of that exchange between audience and performer for months on end. She was in Pittsburgh when the infection was announced as a global pandemic and the lockdowns began. ‘At first, I stayed where I was, determined to go ahead with my next concert, but it was cancelled an hour before it was due to start,’ she remembers. ‘The next morning, in just a few hours, my diary emptied for the next six months at least. It was just call after call.’

She managed to get back to London and spent lockdown on her own at home with her cat – and the Paganini Caprices.

‘DURING LOCKDOWN, I DECIDED TO PRACTISE ALL OF THE PAGANINI CARPRICES EVERY DAY. I WONDERED IF I HAD THE TECHNIQUE AND STAMINA TO PLAY THEM THROUGH. I GOT UP EVERY MORNING AND PRACTISED LIKE CRAZY’

‘I decided to practise all of them every day,’ she says. ‘I’d always admired people who played them, and wondered if I had the technique and stamina to play them through. I didn’t want to slump and I wanted to make sure that I got up every morning, so I set an alarm clock and practised like crazy. It was going quite well, so I called Hyperion and asked if I could record them.’ Her label agreed, and the result is suitably stunning. As The Strad’s Tully Potter puts it: ‘The effect is of an excellent violinist communing with her violin, especially in the atmospheric opening bars of some pieces.’

That same sense of drama was palpable when, with lockdown behind us all, she played Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto no.1 with the LPO in December 2021; the intensity of the composer’s terrifyingly emotional cadenza left the audience wrung out. ‘It’s draining, for sure,’ she says, ‘but it’s music at its most direct, where we’re able to tear the soul. That’s what music is really about. I want to live every note of this concerto every time I play it.’

Ibragimova’s own story began in Polevskoy in what was then the USSR. She is not ethnically Russian, but Bashkir; her family originally comes from Kazan, Tatarstan’s largest city. Prime among her early memories, she says, are ‘the woods and my grandmother’s cooking. We lived in a tiny flat with a lot of people and cats and I never felt I lacked anything.’

She began learning the violin aged four. Her first teachers were her parents, double bassist Rinat Ibragimov and his wife, Lutsia, a violinist; it was not long before she was enrolled in the Gnessin Academy of Music. However, in 1995, when she was ten, her father was appointed principal double bassist of the London Symphony Orchestra and the family immigrated to the UK, settling in the capital – where Ibragimova has lived ever since.

Performing Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto no.2 with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra in 2019

VERA ZHURAVLEVA

Rinat Ibragimov soon became a much-loved figure on the UK music scene, but he suffered a stroke at a tragically young age and died several years later, in 2020. Ibragimova describes him as ‘my role model of a musician’. Her earliest musical memory is of him playing the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata on the double bass. ‘My mum helped me with practising, making sure that everything was done in the right way, and he was always providing the overview. Then when I was a teenager, he started to practise with me and to give me things to listen to and read. I think it was important to him that I became as broad-minded as possible, so that being a musician was never just about practising for ten hours a day. So I went to many concerts, I travelled. To have such a presence in my life was incredibly important. I can see him in myself now, in my similar character and in my approach to music. For the last few years when he was ill, he stayed curious, open-minded and generous until the end. He had such a need to give everything possible, musically and humanly.’

‘TO HAVE SUCH A PRESENCE AS MY FATHER IN MY LIFE WAS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT. I CAN SEE HIM IN MYSELF NOW, IN MY SIMILAR CHARACTER AND MY APPROACH TO MUSIC’

Once the family was installed in London, Lutsia was appointed as a teacher at the Yehudi Menuhin School and Alina became a student there. ‘It was very intense,’ she recalls. ‘I was ten years old, I didn’t speak much English and, for me, everything was new. It was completely different from any kind of environment I’d been in before. It was a very special place, and the people I met there I stayed closest to over the years. I was always tired by the sheer quantity of things we had to do – but I would, for sure, do it again.’

Every few months, Yehudi Menuhin would visit the school. ‘He gave masterclasses, he gave talks and he talked to everybody. I remember that even when I was a young child, if I saw him in the grounds, he would always remember my name and ask me how I was. He would speak to me like I was an adult, with respect and gentleness. This stays with you, this kind of attention from someone who’s so admired yet treats you almost like an equal. It’s something you remember for ever.’ She played to him from time to time: ‘He was always soft and wise, and he always gave general comments that were not necessarily intended for your immediate playing, but for your subconscious nature.’

One highlight of these years was the occasion when, aged 13, she and her schoolmate Nicola Benedetti played the Bach ‘Double’ Violin Concerto at Unesco in Paris, under the baton of Menuhin himself. Her strongest memory of it, though, is seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time. ‘Nicky and I went there late at night,’ she says. ‘The first time you’re underneath the Eiffel Tower, you remember it!’ Menuhin died several months later; she was among the young Yehudi Menuhin School musicians who played at his funeral in Westminster Abbey.

Ibragimova’s training led her down a somewhat unusual path, one that ultimately has given her immense versatility in terms of style. She can switch from the violent intensity of Shostakovich to the purest of solo Bach, and from the virtuoso heights of Paganini to the candlelit period-instrument world of her Chiaroscuro Quartet, or Classical and early Romantic sonatas delivered with subtlety, balance and grace. Her first Yehudi Menuhin School teacher was Natasha Boyarsky. ‘She made me work hard and be honest with myself.

‘ESPECIALLY AT THE MENUHIN SCHOOL, YOUR CAREER STARTS YOUNG. EVEN BEFORE THAT I HAD ALREADY PERFORMED IN CONCERTS. I PLAYED AT THE BOLSHOI THEATRE WHEN I WAS SIX!’

From her and my parents I learnt that it’s never about show business; it’s always about doing your best and being as careful as possible with the composer’s message.

‘Especially at the Menuhin School, your career starts young. Even before that, I had already performed in concerts. I played at the Bolshoi Theatre when I was six! It is great experience and makes you not scared of the stage, but it’s so important that it doesn’t get to you and make you think that you’re better than you actually are. That was a sobering message from everyone around me.

‘Later on, I became a little bit rebellious and possibly my interest in Baroque music came from that period. I decided that I’m only going to play good music, so I’m only going to play Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schoenberg!’ She now puts this down partly to a ‘kind of teenage outburst’.

Eventually, however, she found herself at the Royal College of Music, studying with Gordan Nikolitch, who gave her quantities of Paganini to learn. Previously, it had not been her cup of tea. ‘He made me learn to love it. It was all about opening doors and opening up, basically. Sometimes we would just talk for eight hours. Sometimes we would play darts, sometimes we’d watch a movie, sometimes we’d play, play, play non-stop.’

One unforgettable ‘lesson’ was on the Beethoven Violin Concerto. ‘I was on the BBC New Generation Artists scheme at the time, and everything was broadcast. I was 20 years old and ran out of repertoire within about six months, so suddenly I had to learn everything. All the performances were live on the radio, and my first Beethoven Concerto was coming up with the Ulster Orchestra, which of course was a live broadcast too. It was summer, I had exams and many other concerts, and I was panicking, so I called Gordan and asked if I could play the Beethoven to him.’

Nikolitch, she says, told her to arrive for 11am, but at 10.30am called and asked her to meet him at Tate Modern.

The six-year-old Ibragimova playing with the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra

Ibragimova with her Chiaroscuro Quartet colleagues (l–r) cellist Claire Thirion, violist Emilie Hörnlund and violinist Pablo Hernán Benedí

YOUNG PHOTO COURTESY ALINA IBRAGIMOVA. CHIAROSCURO PHOTO EVA VERMANDEL

With her long-time duo partner, French pianist Cédric Tiberghien

Playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no.1 with the LPO in Prague, 2017

DUO PHOTO EVA VERMANDEL. CONCERTO PHOTO DVOŘÁK PRAGUE FESTIVAL/PETRA HAJSKÁ

‘We went to see some Rothko. And that was my Beethoven Concerto lesson. That was what he thought I needed to know. It wasn’t going to be about the bowing or the fingering or even a musical phrase. It was something that’s deep in the subconscious, involving form and detail within a form; and the feeling, when you look at a Rothko painting, that you can be completely inside it, but still see the shape and the beautiful boundaries.’

She also had lessons with Christian Tetzlaff, from the age of 16. ‘He would teach me when he was on tour, so I followed him to all kinds of places. I went to Tokyo once for a week of lessons with him, and to Philadelphia. He didn’t want to teach when he was at home, because then he wanted to be with his family. I would go wherever he was – which was great, because it meant I also heard him play a lot. I learnt a great deal from his wisdom and his advice about how to communicate with the audience and with other musicians, being clear in projecting what you want to say, or what the composer wants to say.’

There are few boundaries to Ibragimova’s art now. Later this season she will be increasing her player–director activities with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra – ‘I’ve been doing it for years,’ she says, ‘but I have no plans to take a baton and conduct!’ Meanwhile, on the chamber music front, she is planning to record the Schumann violin sonatas with her long-time duo partner, the French pianist Cédric Tiberghien – a welcome addition to their strong discography, which includes the complete Mozart and Beethoven sonatas, and works by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Szymanowski, Ravel and Vierne, among others.

‘Cédric and I first met when the New Generation Artists scheme put us together and we did the Ravel Piano Trio with Christian Poltéra,’ she says. ‘We had a great time! I was looking for a duo partner, so we decided to try playing together a little bit. That was 18 years ago and we’re still going. We trust each other and even if we don’t have exactly the same ideas, we have the same type of ideas. We’re very open to spontaneity.’

‘WE WENT TO SEE SOME ROTHKO. AND THAT WAS MY BEETHOVEN CONCERTO LESSON. IT WASN’T ABOUT THE BOWING OR FINGERING, IT WAS SOMETHING THAT’S DEEP IN THE SUBCONSCIOUS’

She also has a new role as a co-curator, with percussionist Colin Currie and trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger, of the burgeoning Grafenegg Academy in Austria. ‘Colin Currie called me during the pandemic and told me that in Grafenegg they were putting together an academy of young musicians to play orchestral, mostly contemporary, works – repertoire that is not often done with students. They needed someone from the strings side, so they asked me.

‘I think it will be very interesting. This summer, we’re going to explore fantastic repertoire that I don’t otherwise get to play much: exciting music by Bartók, Ligeti, H.K. Gruber, Hans Abrahamsen, a Haydn symphony and some Bach. This is a completely open-minded project and it’s great to see it taking shape.’

Ibragimova’s career therefore involves a satisfying smorgasbord of different elements, and throughout, she remains a watchword for artistic integrity and unpretentious excellence. Above all, she has a continual, fresh and lively curiosity about the possibilities all these fields may hold. She’s an inspiration. Long may she remain so.