Violinist Augustin Hadelich
It's nearly de rigeur in our time, at least in certain circles, to sniff at competition winners, and assume that their technical dexterity masks a lack of artistry, imagination, or invention.
How wonderful it is, then, to encounter an artist who so profoundly confounds that stereotype: Augustin Hadelich, the gold medalist from the 2006 Indianapolis Competition who last year was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, right on the heels of the release of his gloriously vibrant Avie debut album, Flying Solo.
Now the 24-year-old Hadelich, who was born in Italy to German parents, has released an equally luscious album entitled Echoes of Paris on Avie with pianist Robert Kulek, in a program of Poulenc's Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 119; Stravinsky's Suite after Themes, Fragments, and Pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi; Debussy's G minor Sonata, and the Sonata No. 2 by Prokofiev.
"All the composers on this album have a French connection," explains Hadelich, who adds that he wanted to make an album that would cast a significantly different spell. "There is a lighter feeling to this album than to the last; for example, I couldn’t possibly have included the Prokofiev Sonata No. 1 here. It’s just too dramatic, dark, and jarring."
This recital was actually a long time in coming, Hadelich says. "I did the solo disc first because I wanted to do the Bartok first!" he explains. "And of course, logistically it was easier, as a solo disc. This project with Robert Kulek--with whom I've wanted to record for a long time now--feels like a larger, more complicated undertaking, and now I know the hall and the engineer, too. Da-Hong Seetoo is just brilliant—you know, he was trained as a violinist, and is a very good musician himself; he went to Curtis and Juilliard. He puts together his own microphones, his own circuit board—it’s just unbelievable. While we were recording, he was even suggesting very good ideas to me about how I was playing!" (In fact, the Grammy-winning Seetoo, who has been the longtime engineer for such other artists as the Emerson and Tokyo String Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio, Daniel Barenboim, Christopher O'Reilly, and Gil Shaham, has also recorded as a violinist with the Emersons.)
For this album, Hadelich adds, the repertoire also demanded a different level of collaboration--this time between violinist and pianist. “Different pieces demand different approaches," he says. "In some, the instruments are very equal, especially when it comes to the music of composers who were also pianists; in the Debussy and Poulenc, for example, they’re very equal. You can’t just do what you want and expect the pianist to follow. I think that even in playing concertos, it’s so essential to know what’s going on, to listen and to follow." It's a trait that bears out in his astute and vividly realized live performances, which include recent debuts with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.
This album also gave Hadelich the opportunity to delve into some fairly rarely heard repertoire, most notably the Stravinsky that is most decidedly not the more common Suite Italienne. “People usually play the Suite Italienne, which was a 1932 Samuel Dushkin transcription of Pulcinella that in turn was made after another version for cello and piano," says Hadelich. "The one that I play on this album was a 1925 version made with the violinist Paul Kochanski. I played the Suite Italienne years ago when I was very young, but I really prefer this version; there are lots of extra double-stops, extra notes, a lot of bits that are very quirky and very funny, there’s a lot of odd and awkward dialog between the violin and the piano. And I don’t think I could ever go back to the Suite Italienne, honestly!"
Echoes of Paris also provides Hadelich a chance to show off his golden tone on the instrument to which he's very recently bade goodbye, the 1683 "ex-Gingold" Stradivarius that is loaned out to Indianapolis winners that is named after violinist Josef Gingold. “I’d been playing a really beautiful Strad for four years that was very sweet in its tone—I was really spoiled!” he laughs. “The problem is that there just aren’t enough instruments to cover the number of people who want them. I need a powerful instrument that can project—the one I’d been playing, as sweet as it was, occasionally had balance issues when I was playing with orchestras, because it had a smaller voice. But almost at the very last minute, when I was starting to feel pretty frantic, another violin became available." (It's the 1723 “Ex-Kiesewetter” Stradivarius, formerly played by Maxim Vengerov and Philippe Quint.) "I think it’s particularly good out of all the ones I’ve tried. You know, you always wish for qualities you don’t currently have,” he muses. “This one is extremely loud, brighter, with a focused tone, but it still sounds very beautiful. Late Strads are so bright, and yet still have a certain roundness. I hope I can keep it for a long time.”
Hadelich, who grew up on a farm in rural Tuscany to a German family, says that he’s a great fan of social media. He maintains a great and active YouTube channel, whose highlights include this video of the violinist playing breathtaking solo Ysaye:
“My parents didn’t even have a record player or TV when I was growing up,” he says, “though we did eventually get a CD player. But what an opportunity sites like YouTube have given us all, particularly players from really small towns and rural areas. There’s a democracy now in what we all have access to seeing and hearing.”
Access became particularly important to him as a teenager, both due to his location and later after a horrific accident at his parents' farm that left him badly burned, with some doctors foreseeing that he'd never be able to play again. Instead, Hadelich has become one of the most talked-about violinists of his time.
“I started learning first from my father, who was not a professional musician, but his mother taught violin,” he recalls. “Then I studied with a really brilliant Italian player, Uto Ughi; he could really get around the violin. But a lot of what I did I had to do on my own; I had no teacher between the ages of 13 and 19, which looking back was good and bad, and then I went on to Juilliard,” he reflects. “But if I’d had YouTube back then, it would have been great, not just in terms of finessing my technique, but in terms of gathering musical ideas. It’s gotten to the point that there’s just so much out there that you can get totally lost—and often, the best isn’t what has had the most page views!”
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Ariama asked Hadelich to share some of his favorite recordings. Here are his picks:
- Leonidas Kavakos playing Stravinsky. He plays the Suite Italienne, but I forgive him! (laughs) He alternates between Stravinsky and playing Bach with a Baroque violin, and it’s just a completely brilliant recording—actually, any of his recordings I see, I’ll take a closer look.
- Murray Perahia playing Beethoven sonatas: the last disc of that series was really wonderful, just gorgeous.
- Another one that I was listening to recently is Julia Fischer’s great new recording of the Paganini Caprices that just came out on Decca.
- I really enjoy listening to Bach cantatas from the cycle on BIS, with the Bach Collegium Japan led by Masaaki Suzuki—I’m not a Bach cantata buff or anything, and I don’t have every one they’ve released, but I really like those recordings.
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by Anastasia Tsioulcas
