IN CONVERSATION WITH AUGUSTIN HADELICH
Augustin Hadelich
We are currently experiencing a Golden Age of violin players and Augustin Hadelich is among the best of the best – as evidenced by his being chosen Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year 2018 and having received a Grammy in 2016 for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.
Hadelich was born in Italy of German parentage, where early studies included graduation from Instituto Mascagni in Livorno. After recovering from injuries sustained from a fire at his family’s farm in Italy, this rising star attended The Juillard School, studying with Joel Smirnoff. His career was launched by winning the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis.
33 year-old Hadelich enjoys an international career that includes appearances with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw, Seoul Philharmonic and at venues like the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. His discography is far-reaching and upcoming performances include Dvorak’s concerto with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Britten’s concerto with the Detroit Symphony.
Last year, Hadelich formed the H3 Trio with pianist Martin Helmchen and cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker. He plays a 1723 Ex-Kiesewetter Stradivarius and simply put - he and his Strad are of one mind and soul.
Augustin Hadelich talks about Ligeti’s violin concerto and more with Editor Leonne Lewis.
Do you feel more in sync performing traditional rather than modern works or composers of our time?
I grew up playing a very wide range of repertoire. The third or fourth real piece I ever studied, when I was around seven, was Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne. I started looking at works by Bartok when I was eight, so that language is very familiar to me. Growing up, I found music from the modern era, which is so intense and exciting, very fun and accessible.
In January, you performed Ligeti’s violin concerto with the Boston Symphony conducted by Thomas Ades, who wrote a cadenza for this work – which received a US premiere at this concert. What was your approach to learning this stylistically complex work?
Ligeti’s musical style follows in the tradition of Bartok, particularly in the case of the violin concerto. I first heard the Ligeti concerto in 2003, and was blown away. It’s a work from his late period, composed in 1992, in which he combined Hungarian musical tradition, beautiful lyricism, intense raw emotions, and the experimental avant-garde techniques that he had developed during the 1960’s and 1970’s.
These techniques are never employed for their own sake, but always to express sincere and intense emotion. While the work is rhythmically very complex, consonant harmonies abound. Performing it is exhilarating and feels a bit like walking on a tightrope.
Can you further discuss the challenges involved in performing this concerto?
The fast first movement starts with open strings creating an ethereal and otherworldly sound, in perpetual motion. The second movement is a beautiful and serene chant, almost medieval in nature, which is interrupted by a chorus of ocarinas. It sounds like folk music of a strange and bewildering lost culture. During the final movement, the music becomes more and more agitated, culminating in the frantic cadenza, in which the violinist explores musical material from all five movements - as the music accelerates towards the end of the concerto like a meteorite crashing down to earth.
When I first learned it, the main challenges were the complex rhythms of the piece, as they are in a way an extension of rhythms found in Bartok’s music – for example in the fifth string quartet - and I found them very tricky at first. Eventually they became second nature, and I started singing the piece to myself as I walked down the street. Parts of it are a real toe-tapper.
Could you discuss this concerto’s cadenza?
The new cadenza by Thomas Ades is masterful. It is written very much in Ligeti’s language and combines all the themes and motives of the concerto, which build to a frantic climax. It is the only cadenza I know of that prepares the ending of the Ligeti concerto in such a way that it feels like a satisfying and logical conclusion to the whole work.
After the cadenza, the orchestra only plays for four more bars before the piece ends. Ades prepares this ending so that the orchestra joins in at the end of the cadenza. Ades’ cadenza is even harder than the Ligeti concerto, but I would not have expected anything else from him.
Your recent CD features the 24 Caprices of Paganini. Describe the preparation involved in such a project. {A review of this recording can be found in the MIROIRS CA CD REVIEWS section}.
Paganini’s music was a major part of my musical upbringing in Italy, and over the years I have often performed his caprices as encores. I have dreamed of recording these caprices ever since I first worked on them as a child. As Paganini explores different virtuosic acrobatics, he reveals himself to be a thoughtful and inspired composer. The caprices are charming, funny, entertaining, thrilling, dramatic, passionate, serene and lyrical.
My recordings leading up to this one were mostly concertos by Mendelssohn, Bartok, Sibelius, Ades, Tchaikovsky, Lalo and Dutilleux – as well as a recent duo album with pianist Joyce Yang. {A review of this recording can be found in the MIROIRS CA CD REVIEWS section}. I felt that now is the perfect time to delve into this solo violin repertoire, and I’m delighted that this will be my first album on Warner Classics.
Given how difficult each caprice is, and since I wanted to give even the smaller, lesser-known or easier caprices a lot of thought and attention, I split them up into four groups of eight, six, five and five caprices respectively. And I recorded those four groups over the course of one year, between Fall 2016 and Summer 2017. Each group included some caprices that I knew extremely well and had performed many times, as well as some that I hadn’t played in public.
Do you think in terms of sound or style when playing music of different composers?
Not only does each composer have a very personal musical language, but even different pieces from the same composer are often totally different in character. I try to adjust many aspects of my playing with every piece I play, such as with articulation, sound, vibrato, approach to rhythm, phrasing and intensity. I try to immerse myself in the pieces during the days before a performance and rarely practice other works. You never want to play Prokofiev like it’s Mozart and vice versa.
Your H3 Trio made its debut last year with pianist Martin Helmchen and cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker. Do you plan on expanding your concert schedule?
It was enormous fun and very inspiring to play with Martin and Marie-Elisabeth this past summer. They are both amazing musicians. Our concerts together are not easy to arrange since we live on different continents. However, I can’t wait for our next concerts together.