Violinist Martin Chalifour will perform Tchaikovsky with HPO
“For a while it proceeds soberly, musically, and not mindlessly, but soon vulgarity gains the upper hand and dominates until the end of the first movement. The violin is no longer played: it is tugged about, torn, beaten black and blue … The Adagio is well on the way to reconciling us and winning us over when, all too soon, it breaks off to make way for a finale that transports us to a brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian church festival. We see a host of gross and savage faces, hear crude curses, and smell the booze … (The) … concerto confronts us for the first time with the hideous idea that there may be musical compositions whose stink one can hear.” Ouch. That’s nasty. And would you like to guess which violin concerto the Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick blackened in that blistering broadside for the Neue Freie Presse on Dec. 5, 1881, the day after its world première?
The Mendelssohn? The Brahms? The Bruch? Nope, nay, and nix. Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto.” Yes, Hanslick notwithstanding, the same concerto that nowadays is trotted out the world over by teen prodigies and star fiddlers alike before a paying public who lap up every note be they from Tchaikovsky’s original or from editions tweaked by violin virtuosi of yesteryear.
But just because every self-respecting violin virtuoso of today has this concerto in his or her back pocket doesn’t mean the Tchaikovsky is a walk in the park. Never has been. Three top drawer violinists of Tchaikovsky’s day initially wilted before it. Among them was the concerto’s original dedicatee, Leopold Auer, who declared it “unviolinistic.”
And Martin Chalifour, who’ll perform the Tchaikovsky with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra under Gemma New at the “Russian Celebrations” season opener on Saturday, Sept. 23 at 7:30 p.m. in First Ontario Concert Hall, takes a very circumspect view of the concerto.
“I view this concerto as one of the most physical ones to execute,” wrote Chalifour in an email to The Spectator. “It takes a lot of stamina, which you build over months and months. I look forward to playing the piece for its incredible melodies, and fun mood and character changes. Practicing it is gruesome, but the real reward is finally performing it. I am finding that I have to do stretches before and after to avoid injury.”
This won’t be Chalifour’s first rodeo with the Tchaikovsky.
“(I’ve performed it) at least a half dozen times, including once with the Cleveland Orchestra when three of my former violin teachers were in the audience,” wrote Chalifour.
Well, perhaps better those three than one sulphuric, old nick, Herr Hanslick.
The Montréal-born Chalifour, 56, who’ll soon start his 23rd season as principal concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is the third highest earning concertmaster in the Land of the Dollar Bill according to 2014-2015 figures at www.adaptistration.com.