A GROBAN LOOK-ALIKE, A BROODING VIOLIN
David Patrick Stearns
Philadelphia Inquirer
A_Groban_look-alike__a_brooding_violin.html
April 16 2009
Inquirer Classical Music Critic
In a world of concert violinists that’s increasingly crowded with the
young and the charismatic, Sergey Khachatryan stands apart: He looks
as young as any but seems almost too old to be alive.
A brooding, slightly pained presence, the 24-year-old winner of
Belgium’s famous Queen Elisabeth Competition seems to submit to
the great violin concertos as much as he plays them – doing so with
truth-probing tempos and intimacy of expression, he seems to speak
through the violin as if it were a first language. Seen on the street,
he’s a skinny kid in a hoodie, with Josh Groban eyes. With a violin,
he’s a musical lightning rod.
"The only place my emotions are coming out is on the stage – in
my whole life," he explained on Tuesday, having arrived here for
this week’s concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra tomorrow and
Saturday at the Kimmel Center. "Maybe God made me like that. Maybe
my emotions are so strong onstage because it’s the only place I can
show them. . . .
"To be on the stage is a completely different world. For example, if
you have some pain in your body, when you step on stage, everything
goes. I’ve played concerts when ill. I had a temperature of 38 Celsius
[100.4], which is kind of high. . . . But the stage is a miracle
place where you forget everything but being in the music. And this
gives you a lot of energy."
Sometimes he has more energy than conductors can keep up with. That’s
reportedly what happened when he was in the final movement of the
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Saratoga
last August. That’s also true in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1
(which he plays this week in Philadelphia) as seen on YouTube. No
wonder he plays only 50 to 55 concerts a year – each one leaves him
so empty, he says, "I need to refill everything. I don’t want to do
this as an everyday job."
What could be mistaken for an iconoclastic manner is, in fact,
his commitment to making music live in the moment. That’s why his
Philadelphia performances are philosophically bound to be different
from his 2007 recording of the Shostakovich concerto (in which he
collaborates with the same conductor, Kurt Masur). Added to that
is a concrete difference from past performances: It’s Khachatryan’s
first with a new violin: His prescribed four years with the "Huggins"
Stradivarius as part of the Queen Elisabeth prize ended; the Nippon
Foundation has now loaned him the "Lord Newlands" Strad.
That instrument offers a narrower range of possibilities – put it
under physical pressure and sound quality suffers – but Khachatryan
doesn’t necessarily feel restricted. He frequently talks about comfort
as being dangerous: He’d love to take up conducting – but no, it’s
too comfortable. He also rejects the conventionally fluid fingerings
when playing violin. Growing up in a family of pianists, he conceived
phrase readings in purely musical terms, not violinistic ones.
"The violin isn’t comfortable for the human body in general, that’s
why we’ve sacrificed a lot in the way of phrasing, because it has
to be comfortable for us," he says. "You don’t hear a big difference
between violinists anymore because you’re used to that comfort."
Much about Khachatryan is explained by his being Armenian –
seriously Armenian. He talks about his country’s ancient alphabet
and civilization. He’s one of the few who dislikes David Oistrakh’s
classic recordings of the Khachaturian Violin Concerto because there’s
so little sense of Armenian folklore.
The fact that his father gave him a violin when he was 5 – and he
didn’t give it up amid teenage rebellion – reflects a distinctively
Armenian faith in and respect for family. Thus, when the family
moved for job-related reasons from Yerevan, Armenia, to Frankfurt,
Khachatryan got solid German training, and at age 15 was the
youngest-ever winner of the Jean Sibelius International Competition.
His American presence began when he placed in the 2002 Indianapolis
Violin Competition (three years before his career-making Queen
Elisabeth win), and continues as he makes his other home with his
parents in Glendale, Calif., a city dominated by such a large,
close Armenian community that even the non-Armenians speak bits of
the language. Through that, he also acquired a green card, essential
for cutting through post-9/11 red tape to which so many non-American
musicians are subjected.
When he made his 2006 New York debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival with
the monumental Beethoven Violin Concerto, he audaciously played, as
an encore, the other great violin monument, Bach’s 16-minute Chaconne
in D minor for unaccompanied violin. A youthful flight of ego? No,
an Armenian family thing: Both parents had birthdays and this was
their present. (He also asked the orchestra’s permission to do so two
days in advance.) His recital partner is his sister, Lusine. He says,
"I can say nowadays that these are the only people I really trust."
But is there life beyond family and violin? Since he plays only a
third the number of engagements once played by Maxim Vengerov (now
a retired case of burnout), he has time to be a gearhead: He loves
his Subaru rally car in Frankfurt, even improving it with his own
automotive-engineering innovations. No significant other is on the
scene. His musical world has yet to include opera. But he refers to
jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald by first names.
This other life is another reason why his approach to Shostakovich
has undergone a major shift. His recording was made amid a passionate
infatuation with the music. "That’s wonderful for the player," he says,
"but for the listener, it’s not so great.
"How to explain this? Whenever you’re burning about something, when
you’re emotionally completely inside the piece, it just stays there. It
doesn’t go out. You have to see the whole thing. If you’re standing
in front of a van Gogh painting close up, you can never understand
what he has to say. Now, I can see the music more globally."