Itzhak Perlman featured in BBC Music Magazine

Itzhak Perlman with producer Suvi Raj Grubb and conductor Eugene Ormandy (Photo credit: EMI Classics)

Itzhak Perlman Talks about his Past Recordings
BBC Music Magazine
December 2019

MY FINEST MOMENT

Mozart Violin Concertos
Itzhak Perlman (violin)
Vienna Philharmonic / James Levine
DG 415 9582 (1986)

My record company has always said that I ‘let’ a record out; in other words, it had to pass my high standards! When I think about a recording that I’m really proud of, I’d obviously like to say all of them. There are those of the Mozart concertos I did in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic, or the recordings of the Brahms and Beethoven concertos – which I made, I believe, twice. Each one has its own highlights and qualities. I always thought the recordings of the Brahms and Beethoven concertos were pretty good; I recorded them the first time with Giulini and the Chicago Symphony, and then I re-did them with Barenboim and the Berlin Phil. It was a dream of mine to do the Mozart concertos, however. I recorded those with James Levine in Vienna and it was just wonderful. That was relatively early, but then Mozart was young and so was I. It was fun to play with the Vienna Philharmonic, because they spoke the language of Mozart. We did it at the Musikverein, which was a wonderful experience for me – I’d played concerts there before, but never recorded.

MY FAVORITE MEMORY

John Williams Schindler’s List
Itzhak Perlman (violin)
Boston Symphony Orchestra / John Williams
MCA Records MCAD 10969 (1993)

The recording of Schindler’s List was very emotional because that was when I actually saw the movie for the first time. We recorded it at Symphony Hall in Boston and in order to record the soundtrack we sat on the stage and saw the screen, so we could fit the music to what’s going on in the film. I knew the subject, of course, but to actually see it is totally different. John Williams was conducting and one of the unusual things about playing for a movie score is that the conductor does not follow you, you have to follow the conductor. It was about a month before that when I first saw John’s score. The music is not terribly complicated, but there’s something about it which I still cannot understand, and neither can John. It just does something to people who hear it. Whenever I go on tour, whether it’s in Asia, the Far East, Europe, South America or the United States, it’s the only piece that people ask me to play specifically. It’s quite amazing and I’ve been telling that to John – he’s just as amazed as I am. There’s something about this piece that gives you this incredible atmosphere as to what’s going on in the film.

I’D LIKE ANOTHER GO AT ...

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
Itzhak Perlman (violin)
Philadelphia Orchestra / Eugene Ormandy
EMI ASD 3726 (1979)

Hopefully musicians evolve; they should evolve as artists. If I made a recording that I was very proud of 40 years ago, maybe I would not play it the same way today. That’s not to say that the recording I made 40 years ago is bad. It was good for the time. I listened to an early recording of mine of the Tchaikovsky Concerto recently. I thought to myself it was pretty good for then, but that I wouldn’t play it so fast today and I’d phrase it in a very different way, and so on. Those are the qualities that, today, I would have a new approach to, compared to how I did it when I was brash and young. It’s about not only how my playing has evolved, but how I’ve developed my ability to listen to how I can phrase it in an alternative way. Of course, it’s not black and white: it’s much more subtle than that. When I teach my students, I tell them not to play the way they think it goes, but to play the way the music tells you. You shouldn’t play something a certain way just because you’ve done it like that all the time – that’s not enough of a reason. I think what’s changed as I’ve become older is that I’ve learned to really feel what the music tells me and react to it. How you react musically – that’s important.

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