Count on surprises at ‘Ojai at Berkeley’
Musician, composer and producer Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who wants to shake up classical music, heads this year’s program
With her impassioned performance style and innovative programs linking early music and contemporary works, Patricia Kopatchinskaja wants to revolutionize the classical music world — or at least make it sit up and take notice.
The Moldovan-Austrian violinist, who is based in Switzerland, is the music director and featured artist of this year’s Ojai Music Festival, and this weekend, she’s bringing a sample of the Southern California contemporary music event to Cal Performances.
“Ojai at Berkeley” offers four programs curated by and featuring Kopatchinskaja — each designed to showcase her skills as producer and performer.
Kopatchinskaja will be new to many in the Bay Area. Aside from her work with Minnesota’s St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, she has spent most of her career in Europe, where her performances have blazed a trail from London to Salzburg.
In a recent phone call from Ojai, where the festival was getting underway, she said that one of her goals is to present old works in new ways, restoring the element of surprise to classical concerts.
“When you go to a concert, you know what you will hear and how people will play it,” she said. “It’s nothing to do with surprise! This is why people are crazy about sports — they go to a game, and they don’t know what the result will be.”
Concerts should be more like that, says Kopatchinskaja, whose programs often feature theatrical elements and unusual juxtapositions. “The concert hall should be more than a temple of worship,” she said. “It should be surprising, thrilling and relevant.”
Her “Ojai at Berkeley” concerts promise plenty of thrills. The three-day mini-festival opens tonight with “Bye Bye Beethoven.” One of Kopatchinskaja’s European hits, the semistaged concert features the violinist, joined by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, in works by Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Ives, Cage and Kurtág.
On the phone, one can hear Kopatchinskaja smile at the concert’s title — and the way the program bends the rules. “Beethoven is my own hero,” she explains, “and I sacrifice this picture of a hero because I think he himself would not agree to be that. So we start with a symphony by Haydn, with the last movement playing backward. It’s very theatrical and ironic.”
Performances continue on Friday with “The Music of Michael Hersch,” including the American composer’s “I hope we get a chance to visit soon.” A dramatic cantata for two sopranos and ensemble, it features vocalists
Ah Young Hong and Kiera Duffy. Hersch also will be on hand to play one of his works for solo piano.
On Saturday afternoon, Kopatchinskaja welcomes her parents — violinist Emilia Kopatchinski
and cimbalom master Viktor Kopatchinski — in a program of Romanian and Moldovan folk music. The festival concludes Saturday evening with a concert of 20th-century chamber works, with Kopatchinskaja
joining the Mahler orchestra as soloist in Ligeti’s brilliant Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Works by Bartók and Stravinsky complete the program, and Philipp von Steinaecker conducts.
For Kopatchinskaja, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s participation in this year’s Ojai Festival was essential. She’s often performed with the ensemble and calls them “curious, open-minded and incredibly skilled.”
“I like them so much,” she said. “It’s so important to have the spirit of togetherness with an orchestra, to know that you have the same goal, the same aesthetics. It’s like love. You meet someone, and everything has to be all right. Then you can make a family!”
Kopatchinskaja’s musical tastes are eclectic, but she says her approach to music-making is always the same.
“In concerts, I consider myself a cook,” she said. “I have a recipe. In a Beethoven concerto, the ingredients are a new orchestra, a new hall, a new audience. Me, I also renew myself every day. The world, the time, renews itself as well.
“So we have an old piece, and we’re going to cook it today. Every time we play it, it will taste different. We have to see it in a new way, to see how it is relevant for our time now. That’s how I understand making art. It’s to explore as much as possible, to find your own way.”