Detroit Free Press, MI
June 8 2008
Armenian rhapsody
One of the world’s top violists, Detroit-born Kim Kashkashian brings
passion, intensity and fierce ethnic pride to her life and her music
BY MARK STRYKER ¢ FREE PRESS MUSIC WRITER ¢ June
8, 2008
CLEVELAND — Kim Kashkashian, one of the world’s great violists, is a
little bleary-eyed as she climbs into the minivan this Sunday
morning. She performed Bela Bartok’s exhausting Viola Concerto the
night before with the Cleveland Orchestra, and she barely slept once
her head hit the pillow.
"All the other worries I put aside seemed to come out," she tells a
friend. "On the other hand, I now have my daughter’s graduation all
planned."
The Detroit-born Kashkashian, 55, who performs at the upcoming Great
Lakes Chamber Music Festival, is one of just a few violists with a
thriving solo career. But even within a small circle, she stands out
for her maverick sensibility, storyteller expression and the breadth
of her activities as a performer, recording artist, teacher and
champion of contemporary music.
"Kim is absolutely at the pinnacle," says Detroit Symphony Orchestra
violist Caroline Coade. "She’s a role model. We all want to build
awareness for this incredible instrument. She’s out there
commissioning new works, making unrivaled recordings, soloing with
orchestras, playing chamber music and teaching."
Kashkashian is 5-foot-6, but her long neck and lean, lithesome frame
create the illusion that she’s taller. She has a soft face, high cheek
bones, plaintive eyes, short brown hair, an ultra-bright smile and a
generous laugh. She could easily pass for 40.
>From the outside, Kashkashian’s journey to the top of her profession
seems paved with inevitability. Her pedigree includes the Peabody
Conservatory, rubbing shoulders with giants like Rudolf Serkin and
Felix Galimir at Vermont’s prestigious Marlboro Festival and
competition prizes. She launched her solo career working with the
perspicacious Latvian violin virtuoso Gidon Kremer in the early ’80s.
During her landmark 20-year tenure with the artsy boutique European
label ECM, she has recorded everything from Bach and Brahms to lots of
new music by modernists like Luciano Berio and György
Kurtág. Since 2000 she has taught at Boston’s New England
Conservatory, relocating after 13 years in Germany, where she built
her career on the viola-friendly European scene. Her peak was about 60
concerts a year.
But a program-book biography obscures a complex road map of
bushwhacking, grinding sweat and struggle. A perfectionist and prone
to self-doubt, Kashkashian has battled not only the recalcitrant viola
but darker angels. She has willed herself into greatness.
"I’m not by nature a sunny person," she says while waiting for a
flight at the airport. "Some of us fight through a dark cloud every
morning, but I’ve learned that if I can’t fight through it, at least
there’s something on the other side of it. I’ve trained myself to be
happy."
Extraordinary touch and nuance
The viola is the Rodney Dangerfield of the orchestra, its players the
butt of endless jokes such as: How can you tell that a violist is
playing out of tune? The bow is moving. Kashkashian’s favorite is the
most macabre: How do you make a violist sit up straight? Stab him in
the back.
Larger and more unwieldy than the violin, the viola is the alto voice
of the string section. Solo repertoire is limited but growing thanks
to players like Kashkashian and her Russian contemporary Yuri Bashmet,
heirs to William Primrose, the most important violist of the 20th
Century.
Kashkashian’s magic starts with the dark-complexioned purity of her
tone and absolute technical mastery. But the loftiest realm of
technique isn’t speed; it’s nuance. Kashkashian draws an extraordinary
range of color from the viola, shading each note with its own
considered hue, animating each phrase with dramatic intent, balancing
gutsy rhythm and intensity with untethered flow. Nothing sounds
fussy. Her playing blooms with shrewd intuition and delirious song.
"When you hear Kim, you wish to experience in your daily emotional
diary the feelings that emanate from every one of her performances,"
says her longtime pianist, Robert Levin.
The first music Kashkashian heard was her Armenian-born father singing
opera and Armenian folk songs around the house. Though he died when
she was 9, his resonant baritone was seared into her DNA. She speaks
of his voice longingly — "it’s as familiar to me as the color of the
sky" — and every time she picks up the viola, she’s playing a duet
with his spirit.
"I’m a melody person," she says. "Other people might be harmony
people, rhythm people or structure people. Of course, the elements are
intertwined and can’t live without each other. But melody for me is
the guiding engine."
Her taste for contemporary music was formed as a teen intoxicated by
the visceral sonorities and pleasures of new music on record. By now,
she has had dozens of works written for her and forged illuminating
partnerships with many important composers.
Once when preparing a piece by Kurtág, a Hungarian who writes
intensely distilled and eloquent miniatures, Kashkashian traveled to
Budapest to play for him. She thought she was prepared. Five hours
later they were still only two lines into the piece.
"I had a complete midlife crisis," she says. "The things he asked for,
things I wasn’t able to do until later, generated a whole new level of
playing for me. I didn’t know there were so many layers to the onion."
The composers are grateful for her advocacy. Kashkashian gave the
premiere of a new concerto by Tigran Mansurian two weeks ago in
Boston. Speaking through a translator, the Armenian composer compared
her to Petrarch’s muse and noted that she always remains at the
service of the composer instead of the other way around.
Teacher and student reunited
Kashkashian’s final business in Cleveland on this morning is teaching
a master class at a workshop named for her own legendary teacher,
Karen Tuttle, who despite declining health at age 88 has made it here
for the weekend. Her students treat her with the affection and
reverence reserved for matriarchs. Kashkashian likes to call her Tut,
snuggle up to her and kiss her cheek.
"I had a lesson with her two days ago," she says as the van heads to
class. "It’s amazing how much you forget."
The class is at the Cleveland Institute of Music in a recital hall
flooded by natural light. Anna Hoopes, 17, plays the first movement of
William Walton’s 1929 Viola Concerto. Kashkashian, wearing a loose red
shirt and black skirt, dives into the marrow of interpretation.
"Are you nervous?" Kashkashian asks.
"Yes."
Both burst into laughter. "The problem is the evidence is showing in
your vibrato," Kashkashian says. "It’s a really fast, electric
vibrato. Can you consciously slow it down? You were just trying to
control yourself — I know. Believe me, I know. But you can learn to
control it."
Long hours in the practice room
Critics and musicians often call Kashkashian a natural musician, but
she argues it’s a mirage. In her own mind she has always played
catch-up. She took up the violin at 9, late in the game compared to
her peers. She studied with Ara Zerounian, a Detroit teacher with a
Midas touch, who also trained the world-class violinists Ida and Ani
Kavafian from Detroit.
Kashkashian switched to viola at the Interlochen Arts Academy at age
12, attracted by the alto range. The viola’s size fit, too, since she
was already her full height. But the Kavafians were the whiz kids on
the scene, leaving Kashkashian in their wake. She felt similarly
behind the talent at Marlboro in her 20s and Kremer’s circle in her
early 30s.
"Even today, I would say that I can produce a reasonable facsimile of
a natural player, but I’m not one," she says. "The only thing that’s
natural and the thing that drove me all along was the need to produce
certain sonorities. That’s why I say I’m a melody player."
Her friends say no one put in longer hours in the woodshed. This is a
woman who is known to practice in airport restrooms. "It looks to me
now that she does things with such ease, but I remember the incredible
struggle she used to have to get to this point," says cellist Marcy
Rosen, who has known Kashkashian since Marlboro.
"I’m grateful now that it’s been hard work for me," says
Kashkashian. "There’s an element to music making, which I’m going to
call resistance, and without that resistance factor, I don’t think the
whole picture of the music or experience of the performance can reach
the audience. The performer has to fight for something."
‘An Armenian baby?’
Fiercely proud of her heritage, Kashkashian made her first trip to
Armenia in 1990 to perform in the capital Yerevan. One day a friend in
the orchestra office asked, "How come you don’t have children?"
Kashkashian playfully looked heavenward as if to say, "He’s not
helping." Two days later, the friend arranged what Kashkashian assumed
was a routine excursion to a children’s hospital.
It was a set-up. The head doctor was secretly giving her the
once-over, and something in her soul spoke to him. He walked her to
the other side of the hospital, explaining that conditions in Armenia,
suffering from a devastating 1988 earthquake, were so bad, he sold his
car and bought a horse because there was no gasoline.
They entered a room with two babies in bed. "Can you imagine one of
these being yours?" he asked. Her jaw dropped: "An Armenian baby? Of
course!" Six months of paperwork later, Kashkashian had a child.
She picked the 5-month-old girl, whose smile reminded her of her
aunt. She named her Areni. Beyond all the obvious ways a child changes
a parent’s life, Areni, now 18, had one truly unexpected consequence.
"She taught me to be happy," says Kashkashian, a single mother. "She’s
an extraordinary and unique example of a happy Armenian. I’ve never
known any Armenian who has the natural sunny nature that my daughter
has, and, boy, have I learned a lot."
Kashkashian on CD
Kim Kashkashian’s discography is so expansive and so diverse that
knowing where to start can be tricky. Try one of these highlights from
each of the following categories:
– What’s new: "Asturiana" (ECM), a soulful CD of Spanish and
Argentine songs with pianist Robert Levin.
– Contemporary (all on ECM): Tigran Mansurian’s "Monodia," Luciano
Berio’s "Voci," Kurtág’s "Homage á R. Sch," Giya
Kancheli, "Vom Winde" and Schnittke, Viola Concerto.
– 20th-Century modern: Bartok, Viola Concerto (ECM), Hindemith, Viola
Sonatas (ECM), Britten/Penderecki/Hindemith, various (ECM),
Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 15 with Gidon Kremer, Daniel
Phillips, Yo-Yo Ma (Sony)
– Older repertoire: Mozart, Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563, with
Kremer and Ma (Sony); Mozart, Duos for Violin and Viola, with Kremer
(download at Deutsche Grammophon Web site); Brahms, Sonatas for Viola
and Piano (ECM).
– Wild card: "Elegies." Viola and piano music by Britten, Vaughan
Williams, Glazunov, Elliott Carter and more (ECM).
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