Violinist filters sweetness
from sorrow

---

By Scott Vogel
svogel@starbulletin.com

It's a truism of classical music that for any work to be considered a masterpiece, it must first have been thoroughly trashed by the composer's contemporaries. Tchaikovsky's great violin concerto is no exception, as a cursory glance at the literature immediately proves.

"Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear," wrote Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick in a review now considered infamous for its savagery. "The violin is no longer played; it is beaten black and blue."

Such musical profanity is often a sign of genuine originality, of course, and Tchaikovsky's 1879 work will be played as long as there are violins, while Hanslick's work does little but collect dust on the shelves of musicologists. Still, the latter wasn't alone in his condemnation. Leopold Auer, the celebrated violinist to whom Tchaikovsky had dedicated his concerto, staunchly refused to play it, dismissing the entire piece with one word: "unviolinistic."

It's a word I kept thinking of during a recent conversation with a celebrated violinist from our own generation, Cho-Liang Lin, who as it happens is performing the Tchaikovsky Sunday and Tuesday as part of the opening concerts of the Honolulu Symphony's Masterworks season. And while the once-derided concerto has long since made the journey to violinistic, in New York, the city Lin calls home, these are distinctly unviolinistic times.

In concert What: Cho-Liang Lin plays Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D with the Honolulu Symphony; program includes Welcher's "Spumanti" and Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." When: 4 p.m. tomorrow, and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall Cost: $15 to $55 Call: 792-2000

"I was strolling on the street the other day, and suddenly I heard sirens, and police cars pulled up to block off the street," he said. "It was a funeral service for a firefighter or policeman. This happens all the time. At moments like that you suddenly realize how badly hit New York was."

Lin himself was in Australia at the time of the World Trade Center bombings, but his wife was a mere three blocks from ground zero, stuck in a stalled subway train and later evacuated through the smoke and debris. "I was desperately trying to phone from Sydney," Lin recalled -- the couple has an 8-month-old daughter -- "and for eight straight hours the line was busy."

Echoing the sentiments of Gotham's city leaders ("If I forget about traveling, then the terrorists have won"), Lin returned by plane to a completely different New York, a city in which even the normally hermetic world of classical music had been forced to, well, face the new music.

"All the managers and presenters are putting on a brave face, but there is nothing normal anymore," he said. "New York has concrete barricades a block away from Lincoln Center" -- a nearby power station is considered a possible terrorist target -- "and so there are reminders everywhere."

The death last month of Isaac Stern, one of the past century's violin icons and a mentor of Lin's, also is a timely reminder of how, in turbulent times, an artist successfully can marry fine musicianship to political engagement. Whether saving Carnegie Hall from the wrecking ball (its main auditorium is now named for him), debating Khrushchev on the virtues of an open society during a Soviet concert tour or refusing to play in Germany because of its fascist past, Stern never opted for musical seclusion. You get the sense that Lin admired Stern's fusion of art and politics as much as his playing. In fact, such a fusion may well have been Stern's most compelling display of virtuosity.

"He was a great musician, one of the greatest of the 20th century, but he also was a force of nature, this great personality," Lin noted. "And there are few around having so much command and presence about them, and so dedicated to their causes." Among Stern's causes were the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, which supports young musicians in their careers' early stages, and pedagogy. Lin shares Stern's passion for teaching (he's on the faculty at Juilliard) and his engagement with the next generation of violinists.

"What he did for the Russians and Israelis, I try to do for Chinese musicians, but it's a long process -- learning how to help other musicians." And an important one, especially as an economic recession continues to squeeze arts foundations.

"This is going to be a sad article," Lin warned me at one point, and indeed this story may seem more suited to a performance of Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" than the cheerful violin concerto. "Tchaikovsky had a very turbulent life and was really a very tormented person. But while there are some very emotional passages (in the concerto), overall he manages to disguise it very well here. And it was a sunny period in his life, when he was not being tortured by the demons within."

If Lin himself is a tormented person, he manages to disguise it well. That may be because of his profession, which posits beauty over chaos. Or perhaps it's Lin's long association with Tchaikovsky's happier works. Then again, maybe his young daughter -- also making the trip to Honolulu -- has something to do with it.

"In the midst of all these depressing events," Lin said, "in the morning you see your little child smiling up at you, just beaming, and it's a reminder of what the world really can be."

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