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LIM: Your teachers have included Ricardo Odnoposoff, Joseph Gingold, Leon Fleisher, und Gyorgy Sebok: How did each of them influence you personally?

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My main teachers were Ricardo Odnoposoff and Joseph Gingold. Leon Fleisher and Gyorgy Sebok were my mentors in chamber music, as Michael Hauber, the pianist of our trio, Trio Opus 8, studied with Fleisher, and therefore we were able to listen to his lessons and play for him. 

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Leon Fleisher was one of the most interesting musical personalities I have learned from - I will detail more about his philosophies later on - and Gyorgy Sebok was one of my main influences in both chamber music and pedagogy. Sebok dealt mainly with the philosophical aspect of understanding the piece and composer, as well as each individual student - the psychological inner world and this aspect to making music was deeply important to him - and he always inspired us to always question our interpretations. 

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Odnoposoff was my first main teacher, with whom I started when I was about 15 years of age: Previously, I had only had one other teacher, with whom I had begun the violin, and she a teacher who had specialized in teaching young children. My first lesson with Odnoposoff was very interesting. He told me right there and then, “In actuality, you cannot really play."

So then I had to make a conscious choice - should I “fight”  (and relearn my technique) or should I just give up? I decided to give myself a chance, and after an entire year of only Kreutzer, Rode, Dont and numerous other etudes (before slowly beginning with Paganini), often playing 5 to 6 etudes per lesson, I finally began to significantly improve. Odnoposoff was, of course, delighted, and I like to believe that in the end, I actually became one of his favourite students. He was an amazing player and expected one to learn primarily from viewing his playing, yet through his strict approach, he taught me everything that had to do with the instrument in terms of technique, as he was a student of Carl Flesch, and therefore everything violinistic that I come into contact with now, in some form, came from his teachings. 

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When I finished my studies with Odnoposoff in Stuttgart, I went to Bloomington, Indiana, for two years to study with Joseph Gingold, who was the person and the violinist who gave to me my love for the violin.

Under Odnoposoff, I had viewed the violin purely as a series of technical difficulties, with which I primarily dealt, and the repertoire that I tackled was also chosen mainly in terms of difficulty.

In Bloomington, the way of living was full of community, and there was an amazing atmosphere between us as students and between the faculty as colleagues. We were free to listen to luminaries such as Janos Starker teaching his class, where we went every week, and it was amazing to be able to be a part of so much, as everything was so open. Joseph Gingold often said that he had an over 70-year love affair with his violin: “Sometimes I could throw (the violin) against the wall”, he would always say, but he always had an attitude that he passed on to us, that as long as you kept on working on your craft and your art, everything would be fine - “the important thing is to always keep on going”. Gingold taught with an incredible love for his profession - he must have loved each one of his students very much.  and Joseph Gingold, where every note exuded a certain atmosphere - he was already at that time an old man, but he taught us all to truly love the instrument (violin) and our art as violinists. 

 

The stress of our profession was almost nonexistent in our eyes, studying with Gingold, because he taught us to play with such an attachment and affection to our instrument, and therefore the violin was something we truly loved, and not yet another difficulty in life that we had to overcome.

 

Technically, Gingold has also had a large influence in my sound production. My first lesson with Gingold was starkly different from my first with Odnoposoff, in that he was not entirely satisfied with my bow arm, but instead of telling me outright that “in actuality, you cannot really play”, his first exercise was to take out a pocket watch and show me an exercise (where one plays a slow bow upon the bridge to practice bow control) which should ideally last for 3 minutes. He demonstrated it himself, and upon finishing the exercise, Gingold exclaimed humorously, “Not bad!”

He then told me that in order to train this calmness in the bow arm, one should play through Kreutzer’s Etude No.1 every day in the morning: I gave it a try and after one week, I thought that I was improving greatly. Gingold was in the habit of playing this etude himself before his rehearsals as concertmaster in Cleveland, and he only introduced me to this exercise after trying it out himself. Through this exercise, I gained much more control over my bow, especially in slower bow strokes. 

I was always in wonder how Gingold not only dealt with the technicalities of the instrument (violin), but managed to still emphasize and internalize the poetical expression that he received in his lessons with Ysaye, which was a very interesting and ideal “mix” which I was very lucky to experience learning from. 

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In addition, Gingold had the habit of letting you play a lot in lessons, before suddenly stopping you at a certain place for a particular technique (for example, spiccato), towards which he would then spend the rest of the lesson explaining and practicing - so he would allow us much freedom in the lesson, but at the same time, provide us with crucial information that lasts to this day. 

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And that was just the first lesson! I thought, “Goodness, where am I? Now everything is finally getting started.”

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That is why I am so thankful to my teachers, one (Odnoposoff) a student of Carl Flesch, and the other (Gingold), the student of Eugene Ysaye, for bringing me into contact with these two main worlds of the violin: The violin school in Berlin was at the time of Carl Flesch one of the most influential, and through Ysaye, I learned about the French school of playing - Gingold also gave masterclasses in Paris and came into contact with pedagogues there. 

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LIM: I remember one of your anecdotes about Leon Fleisher, where he stated that "in this age, we are divided in two: Some know much, but can't incorporate the knowledge into their playing, others have the technical ability to play, but know very little." How would you advise young musicians to find a balanced musical personality?​

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Fleisher had this concise idea that already in his day, but especially nowadays, there are two main tendencies. There are some, on one hand, who want to always know more theoretically, but through their sole focus on the theoretical, neglect the practical side of our craft and practice without putting the technicalities of the compositions in focus. Then, on the other hand, there are those who want to be able to play everything and focus on the technical aspect of playing, and therefore they don’t dedicate themselves to learning about any stylistically accurate knowledge.

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I always say to my students, what you really need is a balance, and not perfection. You need to be able to read and interpret the score: To understand what you are interpreting and performing, you need to know the historical context and the story behind the composition.

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All of this needs to be treated with equal reverence to practicing the technical side of our craft. When one only practices the technique and neglects the intellectual side to playing, it results in an overemphasis on using ‘individuality’ to cover up the gaping holes in our knowledge. Then we reach a stage where we can play everything, but know nothing - of course, the opposite is also possible.

 

Therefore I find Fleisher’s statement very interesting because I interpret his idea as showing students the importance that no matter what one plays, one has to understand the work comprehensively from all aspects.

 

This is something that I find is especially vital in our day and age, because I have seen often in my days of teaching that many tend to want to learn fast and be able to do things quickly. Students think that they don’t have the time to read the score and deal with the structural aspects of the piece (in light of needing to learn the technique and the notes hastily). Therefore we see the rise of what I call the “YouTube Generation”: Many students start to listen to whichever interpretations on the internet and copy the parts of those interpretations that they find subjectively pleasing in order to get a ‘quick fix’ to their own technical and interpretational problems. I find this very dangerous, as in this case, they are not creating an interpretation based on individual findings, but are rather become a mix of different copies and advices.

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LIM: You often mention that there are three main pillars to each musical composition: Melody, harmony and rhythm. Could you elaborate further on how reducing complicated sections to these simple constructs could improve a student's learning process?

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For me, music is built from three main building blocks: Harmony (the vertical aspect of the score), melody (the moving, horizontal part of the score), and rhythm (the pulse).

 

 For example, when I regard the opening of the Mozart D Major Violin Concerto KV 218, then I realize that in this instance, the rhythm is the most important factor out of the three, as the harmony is more or less the same and the melody is built on a simple triad. So the main building block for the listener would be the rhythm. When we take the opening of the Mozart A Major Violin Concerto KV219 as an example, the main focus would be on the melody, as the background harmony and rhythm is relatively simple - the piece comes to “life” based on the cantabile aspect. 

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Therefore, there is always at least one of the three (harmony, melody or rhythm) in the foreground.   If we take the chord section of the Brahms Violin Concerto (first movement), the rhythm is naturally the most important, and therefore the technique should not detract from the rhythm, or distort it in service of the melody.

 

The “life” of the music therefore comes from these three building blocks - and only after careful structural analysis of which of these would prevail in every section comes the dynamics on which we then build the phrase, followed by everything else which we would need to make music freely.

 

From these building blocks, I also derive the violin technique, and these factors therefore become an integral part of practicing. I would practice the intonation in terms of the melodic intervals, and determine the sound from the harmony: Which colour in the sound do I choose in terms of the harmony? Is my intonation clean in terms of intervalic melody? Am I rhythmically stable and in observance of the agogic of the bars?

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Only after making these considerations, can I begin to “make music”.

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LIM: You mentioned that in addition to your longtime piano trio, Trio Opus 8, you have also played in a string quartet: What are the differences in approach to both genres, and are there any particularities that musicians should look out for when performing chamber music with a pianist?

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The main difference between playing in a string quartet and in a piano trio is definitely the role of string players in a piano trio. One realizes that the string players have to deal primarily with the beginnings and the ends of notes: When the note begins in a string quartet, there is the possibility of softer bow strokes that start without a clear articulation (akin to beginning pianissimos and pianos from “nothing”), that almost could be said to “caress” the string. When one has to play with piano, we realize that pianists, even in legato, have to deal with a mechanism of a hammer striking the strings, and therefore they (pianists) cannot begin as softly in that sense as we (string players) can.

 

The main reason that I emphasize this school of thought on articulation is because in the beginning days of my trio (Trio Opus 8), I felt bad when people would come up to us and say, “the pianist/piano is too loud!” And I could definitely tell that our pianist was not happy about this, this couldn’t actually be consistently possible! 

 

It was not until I came to the realization that balance cannot, in this instance, be solved by sheer volume alone, but rather through the question of articulation, that the problematic was solved.

 

We have to consider, as string players, the tonal development in the piano. Even in a piece as delicate as a Haydn trio, we string players have to imitate the tonal beginnings of the piano - and already, the question of balance is solved for the listener. 

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This theory was developed in response to the audiences’ reactions to the balance between the strings and the piano, and my previous attempts to solve the question of balance by simply playing louder never changed a thing - only through imitating the articulation of the piano has the question been solved, and I believe that this solves the majority of balance issues in piano chamber music.  Of course, the piano is a powerful instrument, but with this technique in mind, it is not necessary to also constantly play with a covered piano - a good pianist can also play a beautiful piano with the lid of the grand piano opened.

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Just as string players have to learn how to imitate and imagine the tonal development on the piano, pianists have to understand what a bow change is on a string instrument: Through being overly precise with the beginnings of their notes, or by disregarding the resonance, pianists often cut off phrases. Therefore it is important for pianists to also hear each note to the end of its development and breathe together with the strings: Through the mutual understanding between the strings and the piano, it would be possible to finally solve this major problem of balance. 

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LIM: Pedagogy has been a large part of your artistic life, as since 1990, you have taught at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold: How would you describe the role of an inspiring pedagogue?

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To take Joseph Gingold as a model, I try to regard closely and listen carefully to every student who studies with me, in order to determine best what would help the most.

“Inspiring” as a term comes to me, when I realize how to drastically improve the student’s playing:      I am a large fan of working on every little detail. If I feel that a student is not quite ready to work on such details, then I try to “animate” (motivate) the student towards the musical presentation of the piece, to figure out a stage-ready interpretation. I believe that an inspiring pedagogue is one, where in end effect, every student has an personal character and should be treated as such - the pedagogue should only try to find a individual path towards the student’s improvement in their playing and career.

 

Looking back, maybe my first teacher didn’t exactly follow this model - he was more preoccupied with a single interpretation and either you were with him or not. This is not my pedagogical ideology.

What I want to achieve with my students is to find out what is the most important for each of them. And that is a difficult task, and takes a certain amount of time, but this is my philosophy. I think inspiration can only be achieved in this way when teaching, because I would need to reach my students and understand them, instead of imposing one’s own ideals. Through experience, I try not to be a “dictator” with my students, although I can be finicky with details, often asking my students to play things again and again (for example, here is the accent, not there, etc.) That is perhaps my weakness but it could also be interpreted as a strength: I will leave it to my students to decide if I have helped them or not - after all, one can only be what he is, and I offer to my students everything I can!

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LIM: You are also the artistic director of the Oberstdorfer Musiksommer festival: How would you describe the differences between the roles of an artist and an organizer?

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 I was asked to become director of the Oberstdorfer Summer Festival in 2015, after the previous director’s term came to an end. For the past 18 years, I had taught violin every summer at the festival, which meant that I had already known the festival well.

 

I did make some major changes to make the festival smaller, but therefore with more investment towards every event. And of course, the music should always come first and foremost, but then one also needs to consider the venues and understand the public. 

 

In terms of the concept, I decided that from my own experience as a performer, I would invite artists and not “programs”. I’ve often played concerts where organizers would restrict the program and say that one would have to play certain pieces in order to be invited, and I thought that is incredibly bad for the music, because as musicians, we play the best those pieces that we truly want to play at the moment.

This was a very important change in the thought process of organization for me, being a musician myself.

 

I also made the conscious decision, to support the artists as much as I could during the festival - just as I would have wanted organizers to act during the times when I was performing. 

For someone to always be there to take care of details, for example to arrange well when ensembles would like to rehearse, or to be present as an organizer after concerts, where I would stay until the last listener has left for home - I support the artists in a way that I would have wanted myself. So I made the decision that our festival would be “klein aber fein” (quality over quantity/size) - not to make the event larger than it should be in terms of expansion without control, to always connect events to the public and town that hosts us. 

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Due to these considerations, it became clear to me that I would not be able to perform or teach at my own festival, in order for me to dedicate myself completely to the organization. There would be no time to do so, in order to keep everything running smoothly and the artists happy, and so it was a conscious decision to put the artists first. I feel that was important and I continue to do so to this day - there are always other chances to play for the public that supports us, which I do during the New Year’s concert for the Oberstdorfer public, but in the summer, I dedicate myself to my artists. 

 

 

LIM: Being both a musician and organizer, what do you feel is the role of such classical music events in society?

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In terms of the impact on the cultural life, I find that music is one of the most important things for the development of a city or a town, and now I do regard with worry the state of music education in schools, how much fewer children still opt to learn an instrument in comparison to earlier times.

 

It should be a cultural and political task of priority to consider what we need as a society to reach a certain standard of culture. It is disheartening how musical education has spiralled downwards in recent years and as someone who has taught since 1990, the changes have been drastic: When I started teaching, there were complete school orchestras in the schools and now there are only few - at most maybe an octet in some schools. This phenomenon occurs of course not only in Detmold, but in cities all over the world, and we need to actively cultivate the learning of an instrument not only as a profession but as a vital part of personal growth! The concentration and discipline that one learns from playing an instrument can also go directly towards attaining better results in school, for example. 

 

For every person, playing an instrument and enjoying music should be an essential nourishment for the soul. The placement of music as a priority in our lives is no longer as highly regarded as it was in terms of education (in the family and in schools), and music should not be a luxury.

 

Everyone should have a chance to come into contact with music (learning an instrument), as part of a balanced education, because a society that is musical, is one that can also learn to think humanistically about other subjects - and to bring it further, a society that is more peaceful.

 

A person that devotes himself to music is one that doesn’t throw bombs.

 

This of course, is just my theory, but I do believe that people who devote themselves to art are those that also value the state of peace that allows them to do so freely. 

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Art and music primarily are the works of interacting with our emotions and different temperaments, which helps to bring us all together regardless of nationality - and what could be better than that? 

I do believe that the practice of bringing back art and music into education would do good for everyone, and that music making should not demand the prerequisite of some elusive “talent” - the widespread practice of it is what I would wish more of in our society. 

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I also see this reflected in the public: When a public no longer comes to classical music concerts, there is a definite reason - because when one never comes into contact with this art form (or any diverse branches of it, different instruments), why should one sit through a whole concert of it?

 

Music education in schools has become a nightmare - children are happy when it is over because all they do is write and gruel the children on the theoretics (for example reading different key signatures and clefs, even when the child doesn’t want to become a musician). Where is the actual experiencing of the music? I always say, a person is not born into this world knowing how to speak, but rather we learn how to sing first before we speak - and we definitely are not forced to write before we even learn how to speak. 

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And I find this is how it should be with music: We should first learn how to make music and experience it and enjoy it, before we learn the theories, because without being interested, who would learn the theories? The schools tend to go the other way around: First learning to write, then to speak, and then finally letting the children experience music themselves. It has to be changed. 

There have been successful examples of playing first and then learning the theories - take the Suzuki method. Folk music in Europe is also an example where people learn how to play fantastically without being borne down by taking it as a profession or needing to deal with the theories first. 

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In light of keeping the art alive and relevant, a restructuring of musical education in Germany needs to be considered. We all know that there is a decline in the public for classical music concerts and the problem lies in the education - which results in classical music becoming an art form “for the grey-haired”, as only older generations were constantly in contact with the art form. I don’t think that classical music is necessarily an art form that only older individuals understand - with the right education, classical music can become a family affair. For example in South Korea (Jeju) where I taught a course, whole families come with their children running around, and the parents are around their 30s to 40s tops, and I think this is because music is an important part of their culture and education in Asia. Just like it was for us (Europe) over 100 years ago, music is now in Asia counted amongst one of the prerogatives for a good education. We cannot just say that nowadays we don’t need (classical) music. Whoever experiences music as an enjoyable experience as a young child, will go to concerts when he or she is older. But these children will definitely avoid concerts if all they are taught about classical music in their formative years is to write (theories). 

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We have a task as musicians to ensure that music is something to be experienced, and not something that needs to be “understood”: It is our job as professionals to provide informative performances and understand the theories, but the listener should experience something personal. When I see a picture hanging in a gallery, I don’t need to understand each technique used to create it, I should just look at it and enjoy it - it should express something to me. Maybe everyone eventually sees something different, but the most important main point is that the picture exists, is in a gallery, and people come to see it. 

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Therefore, to regard music as an experience is the foremost goal that we as musicians should work towards for our listeners, and we should play in such a way that it is also able to be enjoyed as such. 

 

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LIM: What advice would you give to the next generation of musicians? 

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The parting words that I received from Joseph Gingold were, “Just keep on working on the art, and you will have nothing to fear.”

 

We have to have the courage, as music students, to go your own way, forge your own path, and never give up: When you work hard, and dedicate yourself to the art, nothing bad can ever happen. Be open to the multiple possibilities that you might receive in the course of your career. When one studies music, one has to be ready to accept and be open to try out different career paths, especially when one nears the end of one’s studies. If I were only to restrict myself to one single possibility, it would make things very difficult.

 

To take my own example, I had a small crisis when I was around 18. I had the feeling that everyone around me wanted me to be a violinist and all of sudden, the pressure made me not sure anymore, whether I myself wanted to be a violinist after all. There were a few months, when I couldn’t think of much else other than if violin was my true passion and what I would be doing as a job if I did choose the violin. It was only when I decided that I would be a violinist because I loved the instrument and it was completely irrelevant, “what” I would become, that I was able to overcome my doubt and walk out of my rut. Even if I was playing somewhere in the back of an unknown orchestra, last stand, second violin, day after day, I would still want to play the violin. I would be ready to teach little children, even as a private teacher. If there would  be concerts, I’d play concerts - I became open to finding my own path, whatever that would entail. I never thought that I would become professor in Detmold, because I originally had wanted to focus more on the playing. I was a replacement for a teaching position because the previous professor had just left and asked me to temporarily take over. I found teaching fun and when the position suddenly became free, I applied for it, had some luck, and since then, I’ve been here and am very happy about it. But the thing is, I had never planned for this.

 

Musicians have to be open, completely open minded, to that which comes to them. I’ve had students that decided that they never wanted to be in orchestras without even trying - then before they even graduate, that possibility is already closed off. If one does not want to try out A or B in any case, there is not much that remains. I do not think that we find fulfilment in our careers when we decide very early on that “I don’t want this”, or “I only want to be XYZ” - we have to be ready to take on every possibility, at the same time always making sure that no matter the situation, we dedicate ourselves to playing as well as we can. 

 

I believe that then, life will lead you. You will meet someone who will help you, or a job will open up - there is no guarantee it is what you originally wished for, but for me, these “coincidences” have always, in the end, worked out to my advantage. 

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I had originally planned to apply for an orchestra, but at around the same time, my trio won an important prize and so we received concert invitations - to which I scrapped my orchestra application. From one thing came another, and from some concert connections came Detmold, and therefore one cannot exactly pinpoint “why” or “how”: In my case, I was open minded, and that is what I want to tell all my students - once more, be open!

 

Do not fear when your studies come to an end. So many want to keep on studying forever, as they are afraid of what comes after. I believe that everything comes at its own time, and there are always opportunities that come at certain times unexpectedly - one just needs the preparation and courage to say "yes" to life and try it out. I truly recommend this. 

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Therefore, as Gingold said, “work hard, never give up - and you will have nothing to fear”.