Julia Fischer

Interview

Do you enjoy giving interviews?

I do enjoy talking about music. I do not feel comfortable however, when the conversation centers around me me as a person, rather than me as a musician.

But music is something personal, isn't it?

It certainly is. When I make music, I expose my inner feelings and personality, so to speak. Not only that, I also reveal my approach to the emotional and intellectual depth of a composer. I personally play only a small part in this context.

Why did you choose to become a musician?

As far back as I can recall, I have always wanted to become a musician. As a child it was certainly influenced by the fact that my mother was a pianist and a teacher. I loved playing the violin and the piano. It was the most natural form of expression for me. Later on there were certain events -- I would even say emotional occurrences, that reconfirmed my intent in becoming a musician. The first occured only a few months after I started to play the violin. My mother would mostly practise in the evening after I had gone to bed. I used to listen to her play before I fell asleep. I remember very clearly one night her practising the beginning of the first movement of the third violin sonata by Johannes Brahms. It made me extremely frightened! The sound of it was so menacing and yet profoundly intense, much as a threat that lurks in the background. It was terrifying! Nevertheless, this was the first time I experienced the power that music can have and understood how it can affect people.

Have you had experiences that had less of a dramatic impact on you?

Of course I have. My brother was an utter Beethoven Symphony fanatic. My parents were very intelligent to nurture this obsession of his by giving him the scores to the 5th and the 9th symphony. When I was about six and my brother ten years old, he used to take me down to the living room in order to listen to Beethoven's 9th Symphony. We tried to follow the score and compare the different interpretations of Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Wilhelm Furtw??ngler etc. This is how we learned to read scores in the first place. At the beginning it was very much like a game where we would see how long it would take until we lost the orchestra in the score. However, after some weeks we managed to follow the score from beginning to end. For us that was a very big achievement!

Do you feel particularly close to Beethoven, because of your encounters with his music so early on?

I am not sure whether it was nurtured through that. Perhaps it was. However, during my piano studies, three composers played a leading role: Bach, Beethoven and Chopin. Later on Schubert came into play. I assume that this has very much to do with the fact that those were my mothers favourite composers. I was twelve years old when I started to play the violin concerto by Beethoven. At this point I had studied more than 10 Sonatas by Beethoven on the piano, so it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for me to play this violin concerto at the time. Today I am aware that the Beethoven concerto is usually something a violinist takes on only after the study of Tschaikowsky, Sibelius and such composers.

In that case, was Beethoven the first "major" violin concerto that you studied?

No, the Dvorak concerto came before. I was 10 years old at the time, but I did not perform it back then. The Beethoven concerto I played with orchestra when I was 12 and again the following year in Vienna under Lord Yehudi Menuhin.

Did you feel you could profit a lot from the experience of making music with a great musician like Lord Yehudi Menuhin?

I am still profiting from the things that Menuhin taught me. He gave me lessons, fingerings, bowings, tips for articulation, a lot of incredible knowledge that influences my playing to this day. Howver, that was not even the thing I profited from the most. To see with how much love he made music and with how much dedication he played and conducted each note, this is what really made an impact on me. He was truly grateful to be able to be a musician, seeing it as a tremendous gift. Up until that time, I had not really thought of it that way.

Your teacher Ana Chumachenco was also a pupil of Menuhin. Could you see parallels there?

In violin terms, certainly Ana, much like Menuhin, is very adamant about being relaxed with the instrument -- it being a part of your body and playing the violin a further expression of your body language. Menuhin also had this uniquely soulful tone, which he partly produced through something that one could define as legato of the left hand. This is also something that was particular about Ana's playing and something that she has tried to pass on to her pupils.
It is very difficult to compare Ana and Menuhin musically, Ana's great quality is that she nurtures her pupils personalities so they blossom naturally. She does not to try to impose her own musicality on them. When I came to my lessons, it was mostly with a work that I had already learned thoroughly from the technical point of view. I played it to her for memory with my own ideas about the interpretation. But even when I was only 11, it was still merely a discussion we had rather than an authoritarian lesson where she would impose on me her own ideas.

During your studies with Ana Chumachenco, you were a pupil at a science high school from which you graduated in 2002. This is not perticularly common for someone who had already performed with Lorin Maazel at the age of 13.

For my parents, my dropping out of school was never an option. That is why it never really occurred to me not to finish school. I liked going to school and, as fanatic as I was about music, I still had other interests. My father is a mathematician, so math was, at the very least, a passion of mine. I am extremely interested in literature and languages to this very day. I often have to pay overweight luggage when I check in at the airport because of carrying a large amount of books. It would have been very difficult for me as a teenager to leave all other interests behind. Through literature I gained a lot of knowledge for my music making.

By now you are a teacher yourself. What is your goal when you give lessons?

I would like my pupils to become good musicians. It is also my duty to raise their awareness for the responsibility they carry as a musician. There are many good instrumentalists, who are technically very well equipped. Howerver, one does not encounter too many people who have the true moral values of an artist. Such values enable one to remain a true musician all one's life -- searching and developing until the very end. To be an artist and to stand firmly in the music marcet is a paradox situation to be in. Only those survive who have a strong character and stay true to themselves, not becoming corrupted and keeping their idealism.

Which role do recordings have in your life and what is it like for you to record? One of your biggest idols is Glenn Gould, who was well known to leave the concert stage entirely to dedicate himself to recordings.

For me concerts and recordings are two entirely different entities, which one can not compare to each other. A recording stays forever, whereas a concert is something that is gone the moment it happens. In the concert one always creates something new. Before I go into the recording studio, on the other hand, I am aware that the recording will always be there. That is why my live interpretations tend to differ from those on CD. One of my main motivations for recording is I seem to learn an immeasurable amount about myself. I am forced to truly listen to myself vs. being carried away by the atmosphere in the hall or my mood at that perticular time. After the studio sessions, I receive an edit which I have also to listen to as honestly as possibly. I find myself being confronted with certain truths that I do not normally address. That's probably why the works that I have recorded so far are the pieces that are closest to me.

When you are on tour with an orchestra, do you not fall into the trap of getting into a routine? Do you change interpretations from one concert to the next in order to avoid that?

I think it is dangerous to change an interpretation, merely for the sake of the change. Similarly, I am not in favour of interpretations that are different merely for the sake of being "original". Everyone must find their own approach to a work without interpreting it differently just because no one else had done it that way before. In the end this a simple way out and ultimately it is not even less predictable than a "conventional" interpretation. One has the score, the knowledge about the composer, about the era, of other art of that period and of the political context in which the work was written. Are these factors must be taken into account when creating an interpretation. These are the things that guide one's search for the truth.

Concerning a "routine" performance, I have never noticed this danger personally.

A concert is nothing that stays or remains tangible. It would be very dangerous to try to recreate the experience of the day before, no matter how well the concert seemed to have gone. To do so would be antithetical to music. Making music is not a state of being, but of constant change and transformation -- like life itself. One's life experience is the biggest opposition to any routine.

But is there such a thing as a perfect concert? Have you experienced an evening where you felt entirely satisfied with your performance?

No, because I would have reached a point from which I could not progress further. However, there are concerts after which one is happy and perhaps even satisfied at that point in time.

I would like to recount a short story: Once I was on tour with a very well known orchestra and a famous We had eight concerts. After the sixth one, the concertmaster came backstage, hugged me and said, overwhelmed with joy and full of enthusiasm: "Today really was your best attempt!"

It was truly an unforgettable concert for me, I was satisfied and happy. However, it was not a "perfect" concert, but merely my "best attempt."