‘The age of bullying conductors is now over’
Violinist Itzhak Perlman talks to Ben Lawrence about classical music’s changing culture – and the return of anti-semitism
You would never dare to suggest to Itzhak Perlman that he is the world’s greatest violinist. He is often regarded as such by those who have been wowed by his ability to turn even a third-rate work by Elgar or Brahms into something soul-searching and, of course, by a gift to make the saddest music ever written seem somehow uplifting (most notably in his solo for
Schindler’s List). He has won 16 Grammys and in the US is credited with bringing classical music to a mass audience. And yet this purveyor of the exquisite frailty of human emotion is so deeply pragmatic that you sense he would just shrug were you to shower him with enthusiastic hyperbole.
“If they want you back it means they don’t mind you,” says Perlman, with reference to his more recent parallel career as a conductor. “It means they don’t have to suffer. It is not like, ‘Oh, there goes Perlman again.’”
It is in his role as conductor that Perlman appears next weekend to conduct Mozart’s Requiem with the Royal Philharmonic at the Royal Festival Hall. But if he is modest about his talent, perhaps it’s part of a stoic approach to life which, dare I suggest, comes from having endured many difficulties. Perlman, who was born in Tel Aviv (then in the British Mandate of Palestine) in 1945 to Jewish parents who had fled Poland in the Thirties, contracted polio when he was four. His treatment involved inhaling the smoke of burning parchment on which religious scripture had been written. He learned to walk again using crutches and, when we meet, whizzes towards me on a nifty Amigo mobility scooter. It is clear that this is someone who has achieved success through a mixture of supreme talent and unwavering determination.
Perlman’s lifestyle has, of course, been impeded by his disability. “Some people ask me if I would have changed anything in my life and the only thing is that I would have made it easier to travel.” he says. “It has become more difficult in hotels, and in airports. I want to be in that show where they say, ‘Beam me up’. And the designs of hotel rooms have become ridiculous. Architects follow codes which are meaningless. They think if they put a grab bar there it makes something accessible. I now send people ahead of time to take photographs of bathrooms, which is crazy, but it’s the way it is.”
Perlman, who resides in the US, has dual Israeli-american citizenship. How does he feel as a Jewish man in a country where anti-semitism is reported to be sharply on the rise again? “It is a goddamn nightmare. It is quite indescribable what it is going on and there is nothing we can do about it. I am waiting to wake up and think it was one of those nightmares, but I don’t think so.” He pauses. “The world is not always attractive these days.”
However, unlike his friend Daniel Barenboim, he is not interested in using music to bring about political change. “I am not a political person. What I believe I believe and that’s it.
I do everything for the music.”
What does he think of Sholem Aleichem’s declaration that: “Any heart, especially a Jewish heart, is a fiddle”? He seems unimpressed. “I think it is whatever it is. Whatever I can do to express myself that’s what I do.” Then he smiles: “Maybe there is a link. Maybe the reason that Jews have been named in the past as good fiddle players is that it is a very easy instrument to carry!”
Perlman’s gift as a violinist is well known, but he has another extraordinary instrument – his voice, which is deep and resonant and which hangs in the air of a practice room in the Israel Music Conservatory in Tel Aviv where, that evening, he will conduct a group of youngsters in the Perlman Music Program (formed with Toby, his wife of 52 years). Only retrospectively was he known as a prodigy, and he never saw himself as one. “I think I was talented, but it was still an age-appropriate talent. If you were to close your eyes, you would not think it was a 25-year-old, you would think it was this young kid.”
Certainly it sounds like he was a prodigy. He gave his first recital at 10 and appeared twice in his teens on The Ed Sullivan Show (the second time with the Rolling Stones) where audiences were startled by the deep melancholy he evoked from Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. For a boy from a humble Israeli family, he must have felt he had come a very long way. “It was a dream come true,” he says. “You know that growing up in Israel in the late Fifties, every musician would one day hope they had the opportunity to go to America. There is a Hebrew phrase that means ‘the completion of the self ’. You go abroad to complete yourself. I was dreaming of this and the way I did it was through TV.”
Perlman has never been snobbish about appearing on TV or taking in part in more populist ventures: he once appeared on Sesame Street. He has also recently let filmmaker Alison Chernick into his home for a new documentary - Itzhak - The Man and the Musician. As a result, he refuses to denounce, for example, André Rieu, the unashamedly lowbrow Dutch violinist who has become one of the world’s biggest global acts.
“Look,” he says, “I am not going to say to you ‘no, no, no’. If it brings audiences it brings audiences. David Garrett [the German classical crossover artist] is a very good classical fiddle player who decided to do more popular stuff. Now he is back playing concertos and he has got his audience, who may not have gone out of their way to listen to a concerto before, to listen to them.”
He can be fusty in some respects. He hasn’t, for example, ever troubled himself with championing new works. “I am probably expected to do, but I am old-fashioned really.” Doesn’t he worry about the future of composition? “A lot of it has to do with business and what audience you are going bring to the concert hall.”
And yet in other ways, Perlman is progressive. He believes that the steady rise in the number of female conductors is only a good thing. “There are quite a few who are really excellent. And it is a cycle, you know. One thing leads to another. It is what my agent calls contagious and that is contagious in a good way.” Does the old culture of bullying conductors still exist? “No, no, no. That is no longer,” he says.
It is clear that Toby, whom he met at 17 and with whom he has five children, is a vital support – though it sounds as if it is mutual. “We have always been on the same page and we can finish each other’s sentences. You know, that is so great to share your life with someone with whom you think so similarly. We can argue about the specifics, but in the final analysis we are the same.”
A contented life, then. Perlman has created some of the most emotionally stirring music ever recorded. But you suspect the depths of his own heart will always remain hidden from view.
Itzhak Perlman conducts Mozart’s Requiem on May 6 at the Royal Festival Hall. southbankcentre.co.uk. For more information on the Perlman Music Program, visit perlmanmusicprogram.org