Composed in 1775 when he was only 19, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 5 is nicknamed “Turkish”, due to its final Rondo movement’s stormy, unexpected change from major to minor keys – a similar technique found in Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca” for piano. We talk to Eugene Tzikindelean, leader of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, about performing this classic violin concerto. (Comments have been edited for length and clarity.)
Can you introduce yourself, and talk about your current musical role and responsibilities?
I’m Eugene Tzikindelean: I’m the leader of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and that means I play the first seat of the first violins. I tune the orchestra, I make sure there’s a good collaboration between conductor and orchestra. Of course, this could go on for hours, but essentially I’m supposed to be a role model for the whole orchestra, and most particularly for the string section, in terms of how we do things – how we play, how we phrase, how we articulate style, drive – all kinds of things. Mainly I try and play my part as clearly and as beautifully as I can so that it is easy for my colleagues to follow me. I think that sums it up!
While an early work, composed when he was only 19, this would be the last concerto for violin alone that Mozart would write. Can you talk about what makes this piece distinctive?
In Mozart terms, it’s about half his life. At 19, he was artistically fully developed and mature: he had already written piano concertos, operas, symphonies, quartets and so on. The violin concertos he wrote at this time in a way form one big triptych. They were meant to be played by the Kapellmeister or by the 1st violin of the orchestra.
This is a very full-on, mature concerto that doesn’t miss anything. There’s no shadow of him being too young or not fully grown, musically or spiritually. He’s writing an absolute masterpiece.
With Mozart, I think everything is distinctive about him. From the beginning to the end, with a full sonata-form second movement, it’s really like he’s there, absolutely distinctive… It has an adagio just after the orchestral introduction, that sets the tone a little bit, for why this concerto became so incredibly famous. It’s one of the most favourite works of Mozart overall, his 646 works that we know. I would say it's all distinctive when it comes to Mozart.
Can you talk about leading the orchestra while also acting as soloist – is it a tricky set of responsibilities to take on all at once?
It’s a funny one, because this is how this music was intended to be performed: there was no conductor at the time conducting the orchestra. Things changed over the years until now. I think we're coming back to this form of interpretation, and I find it personally much more freeing to make music with my friends and colleagues. Of course, it’s more difficult because you don’t have the conductor indicating entries, showing all the things that the orchestra musicians usually are used to seeing. But there arises a new level of awareness from the musicians.
I’ve been playing this piece now for years – I played it for the first time in 1998. I know it so well, so I can concentrate on interacting with the orchestra a little more. Whereas when I started, there was a conductor and I had to follow. Now we do it all together and I have my idea about how I want things… It’s just a pleasure to be doing this all by ourselves.
The transparency of Mozart’s violin writing requires a great deal of poise and care, more than might be obvious to listeners. Can you talk a bit about the concerto’s solo part?
It’s a good question: it’s just such natural music… But behind that, there’s a mountain of work to make it sound easy. As we go back in time to Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, the music seems so simple. There aren’t the big effects of Strauss or Wagner, say. It’s stripped of any kind of effect – it’s just purity. And to achieve that level of purity, it takes many years, to make it sound super easy and to be very delectable for our audience. It is “easy listening”, but behind it is an incredible amount of work to refine all that material, to make it sound absolutely perfectly like how he imagined it.
Can you talk about how you work with orchestral colleagues while leading a concerto in this way? What challenges are posed for them in this mode of performance?
I think in this particular concerto, and the music of this time, things are more or less straightforward. It’s classic Viennese music: the challenge is transparency. The difficulty is always volume, because orchestras can get quite loud very easily. The challenge is to make it sparkle, and to use all the dynamic range. Many times we find ourselves playing in a kind of a mezzo-forte, but there’s so much down and so much more up. Of course, this music does have a limit, has an upper limit, but has no lower limit. You can almost to a whisper. Never go to screaming – but things can be quite loud and full-on.
It’s only positive challenges: exciting challenges, to make it alive. I keep telling my colleagues, especially when I lead projects like this, that we have to play for people who are here for the first time. We have to make it so intelligible for them. We have to explain the music because seasoned listeners will also find it fantastic that it has clarity, transparency, rhythm, perfect articulation. But for the unseasoned listener – this has to be a very convincing first experience, because we want them back. It has to be so exciting: “Oh my goodness. There’s no conductor, and they play so well together!” I want this kind of reaction from a first-time listener.
What impression did the work make on you when you first heard it?
This is many, many years ago. It must have been on an LP record at home. And it must have been Arthur Grumiaux. I have a vivid memory of it – first that it was so shiny. It’s like sunshine music: A Major is one of those keys full of vitamins, full of sun. It has all the spectrum of sunshine. And the second thing I thought as a child was that it must be very difficult, because I could detect that it sounded so easy on the record – but when I took the violin and started playing it, I felt that was way too difficult. It’s so simple and has to be so perfect – this could never be something for me. But eventually it would! So that was my first impression.
Do you have a personal favourite passage in the concerto?
I do have a favourite passage in the concerto: it’s all very positive music, full of sunshine, but then all of a sudden in a slow movement, as we go back to the recapitulation the second time, the theme is iterated. [13:42 in the recording above.] Mozart goes a little into some darkness, into some pain. That's my favourite place because I want people sitting in the hall to really feel something – something very powerful because in the whole concerto of positivity there is this moment of pain and of desolation.
Some of the things like this we have to we have to bring out, we can’t go through them casually. That is the highlight for me, of the whole concerto that is perfumed with positivity and sunshine and vitamins.
What guidance would you give to listeners and performers new to Mozart’s music?
Well, I would say that there’s a reason why music therapy is used so actively today. I think more and more, as in therapy, something happens to the brain when we listen to music. The advice would be to let yourself be transported by the music and see: What does Mozart do to me? To my mood? But we go from the starting point that we will deliver a top-notch performance, of course.
Just let yourself go, let your worries fall away and enjoy some of Mozart’s finest music. See what that can do to your mood and to your brain: I think there’s a reason why people use music in therapy. I think you can boost a lot things.
Sometimes I think it can be best if we just close our eyes and let the music come to us, eliminating one’s visual sense. If we don’t have the visual, we can see other things in the mind, through music.
Why should one come to hear a performance of Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto?
We have a beautiful adagio to start with, like an appetiser. Then the violin concerto. Then we have the Jupiter Symphony. Then, of course, we have the CBSO – and the Town Hall. It is a recipe for a great afternoon! There’s the element of no conductor, which is something that stirs curiosity.
I would just bluntly say: come and hear us, because I guarantee you it will be worth it. I trust in myself and in my colleagues and in the fantastic acoustics of Town Hall and this setting, it’s just perfect. There’s nothing I would rather do on a Sunday afternoon.
Eugene Tzikindelean performs Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 5 with CBSO on 16th November at Birmingham Town Hall.
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This article was sponsored by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
