I play violin and piano at international level. Which should I do first?
OrchestrasThe violinist and pianist Julia Fischer shares her dilemma with Zsolt Bognar on Living the Classical Life.’After I won the Menuhin competition, my mother said: now you play piano.’
When she played the Grieg concerto, ‘at least there was no other piano in the orchestra’.
She could always try to emulate Jean Harvey who played the Tchaikovsky violin concerto and the Grieg piano concerto in the same prom!
Decca/Unitel released a video of the concert shown above. The other half of the concert is Ms. Fischer performing the Saint-Seans violin concerto #3.
She already did that 10 years ago.
She plays fairly well. Many violinists have been great pianists too, but closeted. If she focused on violin she might be better known (for playing violin).
Playing both is certainly a good party trick.
can’t remember the last time I heard a pianist and thought, “I wish he/she’d have practiced violin more” or vice versa—
Better known for playing violin? She’s one of the most sought-after violinists in Europe! And one of the best imo.
Indeed. If she focused more on violin, maybe she’d have a career like Hahn’s or Ray Chen’s.
Would we ever prefer an exceptional artist to maneuver multiple instruments at 80% or perform at the top at 100%?
I can’t imagine trading 80% Heifetz violin playing so he could perform—not Rubinstein level—on piano once in a while.
Let me have have your finest steak, at room temperature.
Nonsense aside, she is a good violinist. We need more great ones. Shoot for the stars
Gerry: Fairly well? She DOES play violin at a very high level, even with her also playing piano, and she is seemingly well on her way to a career in the top rank of violinists. Don’t sell her short.
Having the talent to be an international soloist on 2 instruments is like being an All-Star in both the NBA and the NFL. Hard to fathom for us mere mortals!
Beautiful, and in a top tier setting no less! Like Enescu, who could also play both to concert level. Similar to what Fischer achieved in this particular concert, he did the Brahms Violin Concerto and the Liszt E flat in the same concert, and drew high praise from Cortot for his pianism.
We just finished a week with her here in Chicago, playing Schumann’s rather problematic violin concerto. She made as strong a case for the piece as I can imagine, then favored us with some stunning Paganini in encores. Just an astonishing artist.
Nothing remotely problematic about that sublime work, in my humble opinion.
Indeed, a great concerto!
It has problems in it’s texture/orchestration. But so has the last movement of Beethoven IX, so… 😉
She is extraordinary. I’ve heard her play Beethoven in Yerevan, Martinu in Prague, and Khachaturian in Washington. All three unforgettable.
The Schumann concerto’s charm is lost on me, but I appreciate the effort.
I hope she focuses on the violin. It seems to me there are at least two or three times as many world level pianists as violinists. We need her more on the fiddle! Based on her recordings, I’d say she is right up there with the best!
I saw her performance of the Schumann in Kansas City, MO on February 26 (the fourth day in a row she had played it) on the first leg of the CSO’s tour. I agree that this concerto has issues and is not anywhere near my top 10 violin concertos I would have preferred to hear. She did play it well, but it was Muti who “insisted” she play an encore (Paganini’s Caprice no. 13 in this case) rather than a demanding audience.
Interesting, I was not aware that she was also a pianist at the concert level. There have of course been violinists who were very able pianists: Jascha Heifetz used to astonish and intimidate his pianists with what he could do at the keyboard, Fritz Kreisler recorded on the piano and made piano rolls (and on at least one occasion had to rehearse the Mendelssohn violin concerto at the piano because his violin was in the shop), Arthur Grumiaux made sonata recordings with himself by overdubbing. I believe Henryk Szeryng worked out the unaccompanied Bach fugues at the organ to get a feel for what he was after. More recently Awadagin Pratt had a double major in piano and violin (actually I think it was a triple major, with conducting added in). And of course Mendelssohn, Mozart and to some extent Schubert were very talented violinists in addition to their piano skills.
But the last soloist I can think of who actually had to ponder which it would be, piano or violin, was Harold Bauer (1873-1951). Perhaps Bauer is largely forgotten now but if you can track down his Brahms Quintet recording with the Flonzaley Quartet it is well worth hearing. I do not believe he ever recorded as a violinist.
Bauer received a memorable account in Harold Schonberg’s The Great Pianists. Schonberg states that Bauer, after an early career as a violin prodigy (toured for almost a decade), switched to piano in the early 1890s at the age of 20 at the behest of Paderewski, who apparently said he had to be a pianist because he had such beautiful hair! That early switch would be also be why we have no recordings of Bauer as a violinist but instead have his half century legacy as a great pianist, teacher, and editor for G. Schirmer, etc.
Grumiaux had a famous duo with Clara Haskil, who also played the violin. They would occasionally switch parts for a bit of fun, I guess. Haskil apparently said that Grumiaux was better at both instruments!
She must have better circuses where she lives.
Such a distasteful comment. Why can’t you just celebrate a talented artist instead of mocking her? Your time would be better spent practicing piano (or violin).
I guess I’ve proved that no one actually watches the videos posted on SD.
She said “If you want to see perfection then probably you should go to the circus”.
We don’t get perfect circuses here where I live.
You just have won the Academy Award for the dumbest comment.
Gerry-she actually played a Saint Saens violin concerto and the Gried Piano Concerto at the same concert. It is on dvd and the above Grieg performance is from that dvd.
Good stuff!
Soon after the first Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1958) was won by pianist Cliburn (USA) and violinist Klimov (USSR), the following joke became popular among Russian classical music fans: Q. What do Cliburn and Klimov have in common? (It sounded cuter in Russian because the pronunciation of the two last names’ first syllables was identical.) A. Neither one can play violin well.
Bach could play the keyboard, organ and violin all to a high standard. He was also a good singer as a boy. And he could compose a bit too!
Mozart was no slouch.
That’s too much optimism. Her violin playing is much better than her pianism.
Does she play any piano concerto other than grieg’s?
does no one recall corey cerovsek?
The better the cellist or fiddler, almost certainly the better the pianist.
JF says, in a documentary about her made many years ago, that whenever she plays music at home for pleasure or “consolation,” it’s always on piano. Concert soloists prepare with conductors or concert masters on adjoining pianos. Jackie du Pre’s masterclasses with Rostopovich, when she was starting out, were almost entirely on pianos side by side, concerned with music appreciation and interpretation; issues of mere technique supposedly taken care of long before reaching this stage. (You can see her surprise Barenboim, in the midst of filming a Brahms sonata, with some impromptu Mozart.)
Good and wonderfully talented as she is, you should also mention Shohei Ohtani who’s a super star pitcher AND great designated hitter for the L.A. Angels. Even Heifetz, who lived in southern California, couldn’t do that!
Obviously you haven’t heard of his stealthy stint with the fiddlin’ baseballers of Burbank. His playing bowed to no ones.
Holy crap!!! She’s amazing. Just thinking of the number of daily hours of practice to get to this level on both instruments. I’m in absolute owe. Much respect!
Wow!