27-year-old German violinist Julia Fischer is a tornado-level force to be reckoned with. An artist of immense musical drive and intelligence, and with a string of marvelous recordings for PentaTone and Decca already behind her, Fischer--who is also gaining quite a reputation as a pianist of great capability and nuance--is now well-established as one of the world's top soloists. At age 12, she won first prize at the Yehudi Menuhin competition, while at the ripe old age of 23, she was named Germany's youngest professor of music when she took a post at the Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main. The following year, in 2007, she was named Gramophone's Artist of the Year.
So when a musician of such intense accomplishment says that the musical world has misjudged Niccolo Paganini, we might do well to listen to her. Fischer spoke to Ariama's editor, Anastasia Tsioulcas, by phone from her home in Munich about her new recording of Paganini's twenty-four caprices for solo violin, released on Decca.
AT: What led you to record the Paganini Caprices? These short works are so often thought of as music for technical study, or maybe at most to be played one at a time as encores.
JF: I'd been playing some of them in live performances--No. 24, for example, and I use No. 2 as an encore. But I think maybe that the response I was getting to No. 2 created the impulse for me to record all of them, because the audience reaction was so interesting. The first time I played No. 2 as an encore, it's frankly because I had played a few encores at one concert already, the audience asked for more, and I hadn't prepared any others. So I decided to pull this one out and see what would happen. The audience seemed to really enjoy it, and I thought it stood alone convincingly. So I continued to do more--Nos. 20, 16, 10, and so on--and then I thought, "Why not try a whole program of them?"
AT: Have you played them all in a single live program?
JF: Actually, no, not in their entirety; I think that maybe a whole concert of just Paganini would be too one-dimensional. But why not play maybe five or six of them in concert? I've come to understand them not just as technical studies, but as little musical poems, and I think a set of them together would be a nice addition to a recital program.
But I found myself challenged by the idea of presenting them all together, and I thought to myself, "If I can't do it at age 25, I'm certainly not going to do it decades from now."
AT: When did you first encounter these pieces?
JF: I'd heard the entire Caprices at age 8, with Thomas Zehetmair playing them. I also studied Nos. 11, 13, and 14 as a child, and then 12--12 is the most horrible, of course! (laughs) It's the most horribly difficult one.
AT: I'd wager that Paganini is thought of most often as a "lollipop" composer. Do you think he's been judged unfairly?
JF: We keep forgetting the context of his life--we think that he's somehow part of the generation that produced Liszt and a whole wave of Romantic, super-virtuosic works. But Paganini was born in 1782, 12 years after Beethoven and 15 years before Schubert. He stretched form in every way possible, and I'd say that whether or not he's a Romantic composer--well, that's an endless question, just as it was for Beethoven and Schubert. Was he a Classical composer? A Romantic one? It's very hard to say.
Paganini's not on their level, of course. The violin concertos have some very serious weaknesses. Foremost is that the orchestra is only there to show off the violinist, and there's no real dialogue or interaction. But I believe that Paganini's Caprices are on a much, much higher level than his concerti. For example, take the First Caprice; it's purely showing off. The Second is very deeply reminiscent of Bach, and the Sixth is this wonderful long, slow creation that everyone is scared to play!
AT: Because of the technical demands? No. 6 is a rather fiendish thing.
JF: Well, no. I meant because it's so ruminative. You pick an encore to thank an audience for coming to hear you play, and you want them to simply enjoy, so you don't pick the most philosophical piece!
AT: You're getting quite a reputation as a pianist as well as a violinist, and we've talked in the past about how playing both instruments has influenced your musicianship. Do you foresee yourself continuing to pursue both avenues?
JF: I'll always play both instruments, absolutely. But I'm not sure that I'll ever play both in concert--and certainly not in the same program--again. You know, I've done that once. [At a concert given in January 2008 at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Fischer was the soloist for both the Grieg Piano Concerto and the Saint-Saens Violin Concerto No. 3. --AT] I had no idea if that would be a nice experience or a crappy one, especially for the audience, and so I decided I'd try it once. I don't think it's necessary to do that again.
AT: You got terrific reviews as a pianist in that concert.
JF: Perhaps, but I don't think it's an experience that necessarily bears repeating.
AT: You've said in the past that your experience with one illuminates the other.
JF: That's absolutely true. When you play Beethoven's Tenth Violin Sonata, for example, having the piano part in your fingers gives you another sense of dimension, of the architecture of the piece. One experience absolutely informs the other.
AT: You've recently started a family; congratulations on new motherhood! I wish this were a question that we as a society asked of new parents of both genders, but what is it like to balance life as a musician--often on tour, always teaching and practicing, and so on--with raising a child?
JF: Well, thank you. But I agree--I feel like this question is unfortunately usually asked only of women. A mother will always say that her child is most important, but working and having a professional life is also very important. I think the real question is establishing priorities. You must ask yourself: How important is each thing? For example, is X concert really worthwhile? Can you take your child along? Family has always been my very first priority, so having my own child is an extension of that. I am traveling less now, it's true, but the beauty is that when I'm at home in Munich, I can practice while my son is asleep. It's all a matter of figuring out how to make it all work.
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by Anastasia Tsioulcas
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