Quarta Corda
Interview with Massimo Quarta
In which way has your artistic career been affected by winning the first prize in the "Paganini Competition"?
I would say that my career has been affected quite a lot, as the victory at a such high level competition is undoubtedly a great starting point: it means to enter in the show business at once.
If you were a still unknown violinist, you suddenly become famous and the musical world starts being interested in you.
After the competition the winner has also the opportunity to play many concerts in Italy and abroad and can get important engagements.
In almost fifty years the Italian winners of the "Paganini Competition" have been Salvatore Accardo in 1958, you in 1991 and Giovanni Angeleri in 1997.
How come they are so few? In your opinion is it a problem related to the method of teaching in the academies of music, or in Italy there's a lack of musical talent, or the competition doesn’t suit the Italian violinists?
I reject the assumption that in Italy there is a lack of musical talent, on the contrary I would say that there are a lot of gifted violinists. But the gift alone, you know, is not enough.
I think that to make it in an important competition, as it happens in real life, you need a mix of contributing factors: first of all the quality, a good school, a proper training, enough grit and, why not, some luck. The Italian violinists have often gone in for the Paganini Competition without being aware of their chances and their training.
It is an attitude of mind, since the beginning of their studies the young musicians have been often driven to enter in a competition with the assumption that "the essential thing is to take part in a competition". On the contrary, in my opinion the big thing is not to take part in a competition, but to win. You are going to start off on the wrong foot if you do it only because you just want to enter in a competition.
To enter and not to win means nothing to me, because you can thrive on playing and not be admitted to the final stage or even to be out from the competition after the first round, just because it was your unlucky day, or because of the high level of the competitors or because the jury members weren't so fair or for some other reasons.
The essential thing is to be aware you have the chance to win, therefore to be fully aware of one's training and gift.
I remember that when I went in for the competition my thought was "I am entering in the competition to win", if I don't, I will be the same as ever, nothing is going to change, I will do other things, I will go in for another competition, but if I have to take part in a competition I should win.
I don't agree with the way of admission chosen for the "Paganini Competition" that, for several years and I don't know if the same happens nowadays, hasn't scheduled a pre-selection of the participants from the instrumental point of view.
When I took part in the "Paganini Competition" anyone could enter in the competition and hope to win. It isn't a matter of hope, but it is a matter related to the training.
During the time of the former USSR, the level was very high and there was a sort of bias against the Italian school.
When, every two years, the Russian violinists entered in the competition, it was already clear that they were the best and were going to win, even if their level wasn't very high anyway they will end up by being placed at the top of the results list.
This fact could create some prejudice in the listener, I wouldn't say in the jury, but in the end it affected the performances of the Italian violinists.
The Russians had indeed another method and the fact that they would come every two years wasn't accidental. During the year that was elapsing with that one of the competition, they ran an international selection, whose winners were chosen to enter in the Paganini Competition.
Therefore the Russian participants entered in the competition with an advantage, because they had the opportunity to play before and to confront the best orchestras and to perform in public the pieces that they were going to play in the Paganini Competition. When they arrived in Genoa it was a piece of cake for them, it was like they were performing in one of the small lands of their boundless country, and this was something that counted for sure. The Italian participants were aware of this fact that was going to affect their performance, furthermore they could feel the emotion, the pressure to play in front of their public.
In your opinion do we still need music competitions to find new talent?
Yes, positively. Nowadays more than ever the competition stands for maybe the only democratic way to make a selection, trusting as well in the juries’ fairness and integrity of judgement.
There is no doubt about it; the competition gives the opportunity to a complete unknown musician to attain international stature.
Even if a competition isn't the only way to make it, we should consider that in Italy we don't have the same power as the U.S.A. that can rule and impose their own musicians, their own orchestras, their own conductors, their own soloists by the power of recording companies and managers.
We don’t have the same powerful organisations. The talent, the imagination are the typical characteristics of the Italians during the centuries and that's all that remains. Nowadays, fortunately, there are more foundations, in particular in the north of Italy, that offer to young musicians the opportunity to study in Italy or abroad and there is more care in general to support young people.
This didn't happen many years ago. To say the least fifteen years ago the competition offered the opportunity to get engagements for about ten concerts, even if they weren’t secure, and at the end during the first year I got engagements for fifty concerts more or less. Nowadays there are competitions that offer a two-three years engagement with an important agency, a secretariat that looks after the managers or gives the opportunity to make records with important recording companies such as the Deutsche Grammophon.
Therefore if you trust enough the competition fairness, everyone has the chance to win. Nowadays it is much more difficult to get an audition with a great conductor than to enter in a competition and try to win. If it is true that there are more chances for a musician to get a job as there is much more competition among young musicians, so anyone who hasn’t got the opportunity to be auditioned should need the competition.
You have just completed the recordings of the six Concertos for violin and orchestra by Paganini. Why did you decide to work on Paganini?
The fact is I've always loved Paganini and that's nothing new. The recording Company Dynamic, which released the CDs, wanted me to record this "opera omnia" so they contacted me.
In order to record the Concertos you have studied for more than three years on Paganini's original sheets and manuscripts, kept in the Casanatense Library.
The research really went on for over three years. I had been actually studying on Paganini's manuscripts for some time, first because I had already recorded a CD with Paganini's pieces, such as I Palpiti and Le Streghe with Dynamic and then because.
I think it is the best way to study and to have an in-depth knowledge of the musician.
Or better, the only way we have to get to know the composers of the past is through their manuscripts, evidences, documents and letters. I would say I had started to study in depth Paganini's work six or seven years before the recordings, and I obviously continued it as I got the proposal.
Which are the "discoveries", the difficulties but also the satisfactions you have met in your research?
I think that every violinist has a kind of attraction towards Paganini... So my first approach to this musician is obviously instrumental: you are curious, you want to try to play his music, to reproduce his virtuosity.
Paganini was without doubt the greatest innovator of the contemporary violinistic technique; he created something that takes the violin to the highest instrumental levels, something that no one was able to make after him.
He basically fixed the criteria of the instrumental virtuosity. The thing that made me totally change my mind about the "outward Paganini" was his soul, the pathos of his music, that typical Italian lyricism, the cantabilità and the infinite poetic vein that really marks out his works. Every composer leaves his mark, his brand.
This is certainly what attracted me in the past and still attracts me today. This was the main discovery: to realise that it was not a mere matter of virtuosism; there was a great musician behind it.
You can understand it in the adagios, in the lyricism and cantabilità of his music.
It is the confirmation of a private, cantabile Paganini in his most human aspect.
These are the contradictions that you can find when you study a composer who didn't let out written documents about how to play his music.
Paganini really left us few indications and this is the main difficulty of this research: the study of the autograph, the study of the mark. You think that a sign could be an accent but it is actually a backing, an inflection, a sigh.
Who supported you in your research?
Francesco Fiore helped me with the Fifth Concerto and the Grande Concerto in e minor and he also wrote the orchestration. In fact Paganini didn't get to write the orchestration for the Fifth Concerto so he could never play it.
As for the Concerto in e minor, we haven't got the autograph manuscript, we just have an handwritten copy of it with the guitar accompaniment.
For the recordings of the six Concertos you have had the opportunity to play the Guarneri del Gesù (1743) called the "Cannone", that belonged to Nicolò Paganini, now owned by the Municipality of Genoa. Why have you chosen Paganini's violin? Why is the "Cannone" a unique instrument?
First of all because Paganini played it and secondly because of its features: a great touch, a stately and awesome sound, a sound that is mighty not only for its power but also in its low almost poignant tone, that moves you to tears.
A very special violin. Personally I have had the possibility to play many Stradivari and Guarneri but this is a really unique instrument. Paganini himself had a wide instruments' collection, that included also some Stradivari. The fact that he chose the “Cannone” among all his violins is significant.
I think that this instrument has a great fascination and I would be very proud if I could play it again. In my opinion Paganini's violin has an infinite and beautiful sound.
Soloist and/or conductor. Which is the role that satisfies you most?
I would say the musician, because it is impossible to be a soloist or a conductor without being a musician.
Last year the opening concert of the "Paganiniana" aroused enthusiasm for your passion and your vigour in conducting and playing Paganini's works. Is it easy for you to convey your feelings?
Of course, it is easy if the audience is attentive and sensitive like the Genoese one. I think that it is relevant to convey your feelings and explain to the audience how you have decided to make a particular musical choice. During that concert this matter aroused interest and it follows that when you are playing you create a thread running through the audience… because the music is a universal language.
The audience was indeed rewarded with the performance of the Adagio, an unpublished work by Paganini.
È un pezzo che è stato ritrovato e che non era mai stato suonato prima d'ora. Faceva parte del manoscritto della Campanella, però a mio avviso non ha molto a che vedere con la Campanella, né per carattere né per sonorità. Quindi resta da vedere se fosse stato originariamente inserito in un concerto di Paganini a noi sconosciuto o se fosse nato come un Adagio in sostituzione di quello della Campanella.
In your opinion, which is the best way to get young people listen to classical symphonic music?
This piece was rediscovered but it had never been played before. It was part of the manuscript of the Campanella, but in my opinion it has not much to do with the Campanella neither for its feature nor for its sonority. It is still to be determined if it was originally part of anunknown concert by Paganini or if it has been written as an Adagio to replace the one of the Campanella.
We should consider that the general idea to attract more audience in classical music concerts would always work for a very low outcome.
Even if the media will push classical music to become an hit as a Walt Disney movie, it might not be right to drag a young to listen to a classical music concert expecting he would become a great musician.
It is better to do the best in order to give to the young the opportunity to approach the music, because I believe this is a discipline that can give a sound education from the point of view related to morals, culture, uprightness, rules and regulations.
What can be done is just that: trying to involve the young generation in the study of classical music by guided listening.
I don't think that crossing boundaries between classical and pop or jazz music could work.
I believe that some kind of music should be performed in the right place and with the right instrument. I don't think that in order to approach the young you should change the way of making music or that bands should play classical music with pop arrangement or vice versa. It could be fun, but in my opinion it is not necessary to understand the significance of the classical music language.