Front Row (Radio 4) Interview - April 2008

Friday 11 April 2008

Kirsty Lang presenting - Maxim Vengerov

Kirsty Lang talks to Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov whose international virtuoso career was kicked off by winning the Wieniawski competition in Poland aged 11, and sweeping the board at the Carl Flesch competition in London aged 15. Tonight, Vengerov will conduct the opening concert of the 25th Menuhin violin competition in St. David's Hall in Cardiff, the jury of which he will then serve on over the next ten days. Originally he was going to play at the concert but, due to an arm injury, he has not given a public performance since summer 2007. Maxim Vengerov talks to Kirsty about the injury to his arm, the rigours of practising through the night in sub-zero temperatures as a 5-year-old in Siberia, and playing for Sudanese child soldiers in his capacity as a UNICEF envoy.

The opening concert of the 25th Menuhin violin competition takes place at St David's Hall in Cardiff tonight and the competition continues in Cardiff until 20 April.

Maxim Vengerov is rated one of the world’s greatest violinists, but the Siberian-born musician hasn’t played in public since last June after suffering a shoulder injury. It’s been a long and much talked about silence.

Vengerov was due to play at tonight’s opening concert of the 25th Menuhin Violin Competition in Cardiff – where he’s a member of the competition jury – but then it was announced that he’d be conducting the concert instead.

Maxim Vengerov told Front Row that he would start playing the violin again in public later this year but for the moment he wants to give it a rest. Not surprising for a former child prodigy who began touring at the age of 12 and whose extraordinary talent was first spotted when he was just 5 years old.

Maxim: My first competition was when I was 5 and I remember coming on stage and playing in front of the audiences and there was a proper jury that was judging, you know? All the guys were sitting with their glasses and piece of paper. I wasn’t frightened but it was quite an interesting experience just to play for judges and then I won this competition so my next one was when I was 11, in Poland. I just remember that I was just playing, not thinking about anything, and when they announced that I won the first prize I was in the restaurant eating ice creams, because they had fantastic ice creams! So, for me, a competition meant not just to compete but to give my very, very, very best.

KL: So now that you’re a judge, looking at youngsters like this, do you bring that experience, do you empathise with those little kids?

M: Of course! It brings me back to my childhood and all the things I was going through and all the memories and I know exactly what they feel. And I would really forgive if something goes wrong for them – nerves and this, you know – because I remember when I was 11, that’s how it was in Poland. I was there and I was so concentrated, I was really excited, different country, you know? Especially when you come from Russia.

KL: Let’s talk about your upbringing because you were brought up in Novosibirsk, which is the capital of Western Siberia. I imagine this is great frozen wastes under snow for most of the year; I mean what are your first memories?

M: Lots of snow, frozen hands, playing hockey, having shortages of food, all the lines for vegetables and, you know, queues

KL: And your father, of course, was an oboist, wasn’t he?

M: Yes, my father was an oboist, he was playing oboe for 20 years in the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra. My mom was a choir conductor in an orphanage and she was a director of the school; she was an amazing musician and I could see what really music does for children.

KL: Because, from an early stage, you were involved, weren’t you, in your mother’s orphanage?

M: Yes, I was always – I came to the rehearsal of my mom’s choirs and sometimes she had a huge choir, like 500 kids. I was singing along and I really enjoyed myself there, but my mom, coming home, she would say “Maxim, I have 500 kids but you are the most difficult one!”

KL: But she was determined, wasn’t she, to see you learn an instrument? Because you would come home from school, go to sleep so that you would be up by the time your mother came back from the orphanage about 7 or 8 o’clock, and you would then start practising for up to 6 or 7 hours?

M: Yes – 7/8 hours actually, which started at 7 when my mom came home. She cooked quickly dinner and then we started this violin torture! (he laughs) I would carry on sometimes until 4 in the morning and when already it was sunrise I would go on my tricycle – squeaking tricycle! – and go around the block and all the grandmothers would say “Oh, those terrible parents! What do they do?!”

I had to practice a lot as my first teacher said that the talented child has to do double, if not triple, from ordinary, you know. And by the time I was 7 I could play the Mendelssohn Concerto, Lalo Symphonie Espagnole and, you know, Vieuxtemps Concertos – so when I came to study in Moscow I could already play sort of already mainstream repertoire.

KL: You’re a 6 year old boy and you’re playing right through the middle of the night – that means you’re not going out and playing football, you’re missing out.

M: Not really because I had a childhood but just very condensed, you know, like concentrated orange juice, just a powder!

If I had the time with kids I was crazy! It was like 15 minutes – I would get out of the house, jump into the snow, play hockey with my friends and then get back home, rush back because I knew I had only 15 minutes – that was a break - and my mom had to just take all the snow out of me and it would take another 15 minutes just to bring me to my normal senses.

KL: And you used to practise in gloves, didn’t you, because you were so cold sometimes?

M: In Siberia sometimes it gets minus 40, minus 50 and we had problems with heating sometimes so, when we didn’t have the heating and hot water in the room, it was sometimes zero degrees so it was freezing!

KL: How do you practise with gloves on?

M: Well you cut the bits for the fingers off! (he laughs)

KL: And there you are, at 7 years old you go with your grandparents to Moscow – which in those days, in the days of the Soviet Union, was of course illegal because you needed passes, didn’t you, to be able to move from one city to the next? It must have been a pretty scary experience – I mean Moscow is thousands of miles away from Novosibirsk.

M: Going to Moscow was like going to a different country and although I enrolled into the most wonderful music school – there is a Central Music School for highly talented children in Moscow – the school didn’t grant a visa for us so we had to stay illegally. My grandparents came with me, we rented an apartment and every time, after 3 months, the police would come and say “what are you doing here?” and my grandparents, though they were in fearing, would say “oh, we’re here for medical reasons, we’re going back.”

And, like this, we stayed for three years!

KL: Now in 1997 you became a UNICEF envoy for music, continuing that tradition that you’d learnt at your mother’s knee of looking after underprivileged children, but also bringing them joy through music. You played for child soldiers, didn’t you?

M: Yes, I played for child soldiers abducted by rebels: children from Sudan, in Uganda. I played for them

KL: I mean these are kids who have seen the most terrible atrocities, they have been raped, abused, kidnapped from their homes; they’ve probably never heard classical music before: you stand in front of them – one of the world’s greatest violinists – and play. What effect does it have on them?

M: It’s very interesting that when I came to the camps where the kids where - they had escaped from the rebels - and in the beginning you would start making verbal contact with them and they were completely non-responsive to anything, like a blank, as if – dead eyes, no energy exchange, nothing – and the teachers said ‘some children, really they don’t communicate, they suffered through the trauma and they are completely locked.’ But only when I took the violin, children – as if they lighten up, I set them on fire! I play some little dances, you know, here and there – I experimented with music. What they really connected to was the rhythmical dances, something to do with lots of rhythm

KL: Did they start to move?

M: And they started to move, dance, and they said ‘oh, we have something else for you – look - and this is our instrument’ – it was just one stick and one string and, you know, just a piece of wood like a violin. So the guy – he was a 16 year old guy – he challenged me in musical competition and I played with him, improvised, and then the whole camp started dancing. It was a most joyful experience.

KL: Now, you haven’t been playing recently, have you?

MV: I haven’t been playing. Sadly in January last year I had a little minor accident so in June I had to stop for a while.

KL: What happened?

M: What happened – the worst place to have the accident, the most dangerous, is your home! I slipped in the bathroom and I hurt my shoulder. I didn’t take it seriously so

KL: it’s your bowing arm?

M: Yes, my bowing arm. I didn’t take it seriously at first and I continued and kept on playing and playing and I should have stopped right there and just had two months and it would be over. But I forced myself a little bit so in June I had to withdraw from my schedule and then I went to several doctors in Japan and then, luckily

KL: You went to see a specialist doctor in Japan who’d treated lots of other musicians?

M: Yes. So luckily I don’t know whether he really helped me or it was just the time to

KL: What did he do?

M: He was just doing injections. He said there was a blockage of the nerve – something very simple – and luckily it just went away.

KL: It’s every musician or athlete’s worst nightmare, that kind of injury, isn’t it? It must have been terribly frightening.

M: You know there is no good things without bad things, you know? I am thankful for this time, that this happened to me.

KL: Why?

M: I tell you – because if that didn’t happen to me, this injury, I would probably go on this wheel on and on like a hamster, on and on and on, playing concerts because, you know, I could play maybe 200 concerts a year if I want to, or even more.

Already always I try to hold myself but it was beyond my power to stop myself playing because I love music and people ask me all the time and I am quite weak saying no to people!

KL: Now you say the injury forced you to stop, has it also changed the way you play? Have you had to alter the way you play?

M: It’s a very interesting question because, once I started feeling discomfort in the right hand, it appeared that I am actually using too much force in music.

KL: Because you were a very physical musician.

M: Exactly – a very physical musician and I played music always with joy and I was always wondering how can you actually use absolutely no force but radiate this enormous energy and even more and I could never actually grasp the essence of this. But this little accident that happened - and discomfort – forced me to look in myself and find inner strength. And also my recording with Mozart, I found myself towards music of Mozart because the music of Mozart actually gives you this incredible power that comes from within.

KL: Now at the opening of the Menuhin Competition – the concert opening – you’re going to be conducting Joshua Bell playing Tchaikovsky – now this was a performance that you were actually going to be playing the violin in yourself, now you’re conducting. How’s that going to be for you, do you think?

M: You know, it’s going to be very interesting because this year I’m not playing the violin – not just yet. I’m practising a lot now, preparing myself for recordings and doing just recordings but doing other things, you know?

KL: So you’re still playing every day – just not in public?

M: Yes – every day, every day. But now I came up with these different projects and I’m very interested in conducting a repertoire like Bruckner, Shostakovich Symphonies, Tchaikovsky – really to try this new way, how you can - just with your energy - appeal to the orchestra members and just clear a channel for them. So when I come back to the violin, hopefully it’s going to – and already when I play the violin it feels absolutely incredible.