Christian Tetzlaff, one of the world’s most admired and versatile violinists, is the National Symphony Orchestra’s guest artist this week for a performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. For the past two decades, he and Maestro Christoph Eschenbach have worked together quite a few times, most recently on concertos by Lalo and Shostakovich, but this will be their first Beethoven concerto collaboration.
“This is an astonishing piece in which the first movement begins with naivete,” Tetzlaff said, speaking from his home in Germany. “It moves from simple childlike songs to the great excesses of military responses and the wild dynamics of the timpani. In the middle, it comes to a complete standstill. For 30 seconds there is a long A before the violin triumphantly comes back with D major elements and obvious association to the hunt in the French horn melodies.”
This concerto has special meaning for Tetzlaff because he played it for his concert debut at age 14. A favorite of audiences and musicians alike for more than 200 years, it is one of the most frequently performed and recorded. Many violinists have ornamented it with cadenzas by Fritz Kreisler, Alfred Schnittke and others, but Tetzlaff stays true to Beethoven by playing the composer’s original cadenzas. He will share fascinating details about the concerto and observations from the artist’s point of view during the Q&A session following Thursday’s performance.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, to a musical family, Tetzlaff appears frequently today with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors playing works ranging from Bach to Berg. A chamber music enthusiast, he enjoys performing with diverse colleagues and with his trio and his quartet, both of which include cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, his sister. His latest recording, Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1, exemplifies the vast expanse of styles that energize him.
“The Szymanowski is erotic and colorful,” he said. “I need to be a very different person playing it than when I play the Beethoven. I really value the opportunity to play many kinds of music from masterworks to chamber pieces by contemporary composers.”
In 2005, Musical America named Tetzlaff the Instrumentalist of the Year. This season finds him as the 2010-11 Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist, a position that enables him to curate a wide-ranging personal concert series. Some highlights of the honor are an appearance with the Boston Symphony led by James Levine performing concertos by Mozart, Bartok and the New York premiere of a new concerto by British composer Harrison Birtwistle; a play/conduct performance with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; a performance with the Ensemble ACJW led by Sir Simon Rattle; and a concert with the Tetzlaff Quartet. Audiences will also be treated to his rare duo recital with violinist Antje Weithass.
Along with preparations for this season-long event, Tetzlaff’s formidable schedule following the NSO appearance includes concerts in Toronto, Berlin, London, Hamburg and Birmingham, England. During a European tour with the San Francisco Symphony and also at the University of California, he will play the complete cycle of Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas, then heads for Tokyo where he and Alexander Lonquich will perform all the Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano.
In between, he will tour with the Tetzlaff Quartet throughout North America and Europe and, as part of the Carnegie Hall Perspectives project, will conduct a professional training workshop for young violinists and pianists in advance of their young artists concert.
“I look forward to conducting a professional training workshop for young musicians because I do a lot of teaching and try to instill my feelings of what music must be,” he said. “It must have a speaking quality, variety, clarity and form a sound to the specific demands of the instrument.”
