INTERVIEW: Violin virtuoso Ray Chen finds freshness in classic concertos

The world-renowned Bamberg Symphony is finishing up a tour of the United States with Maestro Christoph Eschenbach at the helm. They recently played Carnegie Hall and the State Theater in New Jersey, and now they head to the West Coast for concerts in California, including a Feb. 17 performance at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles.

Along for the classical ride is violin virtuoso Ray Chen, who will play on different nights Max Bruch’s Concerto No. 1 in G Minor and Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Chen is a go-to, in-demand musician who has played and recorded with some of the best orchestras and conductors in the world.

The violinist’s credits include performances with the London Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de France. He recently signed a record deal with Decca Classics; this comes after three Sony releases and more than 2 million followers on SoundCloud. The Taiwan-born, Australia-raised musician won 2008’s Yehudi Menuhin Competition and 2009’s Queen Elisabeth Competition.

Recently, Chen and Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails about his current tour with the Bamberg Symphony and Eschenbach. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.

What are the particular challenges of playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor?

Because the the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto is one of the most popular pieces of the genre, it can be a challenge to maintain freshness and variety when it’s the hundredth performance of the piece. One has to conjure up a kind of innate freshness in the music that inspires both performer and audience. I first started playing this piece when I was 11 years old, and it’s been with me at all stages of my musical life; competitions, auditions, the countless lessons, companion to hundreds of hours of practice room sessions. Yet after all that, when the performance begins and the bow touches the string, you still have to think of that person in the audience hearing it for the first time. This pure joy that’s so natural to the piece. A quicksilver passion that’s within each phrase. It’s a real gem to play.

As you continue to play Mendelssohn, do you dig deeper and learn more about the piece?

I think it’s always important to dig deeper than in the music. As a performer your job is to tell a story with the notes, and that can be up to your personal interpretation. But it helps have to know the background of the story you’re presenting. Mendelssohn was a real genius as a kid and is often compared to Mozart. Though when you compare what both composers had written by the age of 16, Mendelssohn far outclasses Mozart. The Violin Concerto in E minor was written and completed in his later years when he was 35 (he also died tragically young at the age of 38, only living two more years than Mozart), so although the piece is typical to Mendelssohn’s happy, light, quicksilver style, it’s also important to remember that he was also a normal human being; subject to fits of impassioned and temperamental moments to the point of physical collapse. I think we tend to label these composers with simple and stereotypical character descriptions of whom we think they are to suit our own needs; Mozart as a happy child prodigy, or Beethoven as an angry deaf man. But they are so much more than that, and the music can either choose to represent a wider, multi-faceted person they truly were or a narrow, simplified version.

On this U.S. tour, you are also playing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Do you find any Romantic connection to the pieces of these two 19th-century composers from Germany?

The Bruch and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos, along with the Brahms and Beethoven, were quoted to be the “four great German violin concertos” by the eminent violinist of the time — Joseph Joachim. His exact quote is as follows:

“The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven’s. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.”

— Joseph Joachim

In fact, the Stradivarius which I play on is named after the man whom the Bruch Violin Concerto was dedicated to: the “Joachim” Stradivarius made in 1715. I guess you could say all the notes are already in there!

What’s it like to work with conductor Christoph Eschenbach, whom you collaborated with on The Mozart Album?

Maestro Eschenbach is not only a wonderful musician to work with but also a great human being. I clearly remember the first time I saw him, which was when he came to do a reading session with my school orchestra in Philadelphia. We did a reading of [Igor] Stravinsky’s Petrushka, and I was just in awe at how someone could make an orchestra sound so exciting. And that’s when I knew that classical music could most definitely be exciting for young people; it just had to be presented in the right way!

Your website states that you are interested in exposing the younger generation to classical music. Why is this an important goal for you?

As a young person who enjoys all kinds of music — not only classical — I feel really strongly that people should just try as many different experiences as possible. The more important thing is that it’s done the right way. I think one of those ways is to ensure that it’s always a personal experience. It’s like this — have you ever watched a movie that you knew nothing about, didn’t know any of the actors or producers, and just went by yourself? It usually helps if you have a connection to at least one of the factors in the equation. That’s why I try to connect to as many people as I can, through videos on social media, backstage meet & greets, pre-concert talks. All things which give people a reason to come listen to classical music in this day and age of countless choices.

How did you first come to play the violin? Was it always your instrument of choice?

When I was 4 years old, I had a little toy guitar that I liked to play around with when one day I suddenly decided to put the guitar underneath my chin and together with a chopstick, pretend to play this “new” instrument. My parents thought it was funny and cute and decided to get me a mini violin (I think it was 1/8 size) and start me on Suzuki Method, which I absolutely loved. We also had a piano in the house, but it was just such a monstrous machine-like instrument to me whereas the violin was something that grew with me. The violin was personal to me, like a part of my body, and I think that’s why I took to it so enthusiastically.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

The Bamberg Symphony with Ray Chen as soloist and Christoph Eschenbach as conductor will play California in the coming days. They make stops in Palm Springs, Los Angeles and San Diego. Click here for more information and tickets.