Interview with Violinist Augustin Hadelich: a 20-year 'American Road Trip'
Violinist Augustin Hadelich certainly has proven himself a master of our beloved classics of the violin - Bach, Beethoven, Paganini and beyond. But I love seeing this side of him:
That's Augustin in July, playing his own version of the quintessentially American "Orange Blossom Special" as an encore to his performance of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 with the New York Philharmonic at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in Colorado. His fiddle: the 1744 "Leduc/Szerying" Guarneri "del Gesù" violin.
Note the audible cheers, the near-universal smiles on faces in the audience, the palpable joy in his playing.
Certainly it's a celebration of American music - and this year Augustin has a particular reason to celebrate: it's his 10th anniversary of becoming an American citizen, which he did in 2014.
This week Augustin releases American Road Trip, another celebration the music of his adoptive homeland, recorded with pianist Orion Weiss. While the album doesn't include Augustin's "Orange Blossom Special" arrangement from above, it does include his arrangement of "Wild Fiddler's Rag" by Howdy Forrester - as well as a diverse representation of American composers and genres from the 19th century until now.
Augustin took time from his busy concert schedule to answer some of my questions about the music on this album and his perspective on American music and culture. I started by asking, what was his concept for this album?
Augustin Hadelich: America is often called a "melting pot" of peoples and their cultures, and so maybe it's not a surprise that this would also be true of American classical music and its rich variety of styles, ranging from romantic composers like Amy Beach and Samuel Barber, to mavericks like Charles Ives and John Cage, to jazz- and folk-inspired composers like Bernstein, Eddie South and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and finally the minimalists like John Adams. They were really living on different planets, stylistically. It's very different from a French album or a Czech album. But these contrasts and contradictions are typical of American culture.
When I was growing up in Italy and Germany, I didn't really know any of the works on this album. I first came to America exactly 20 years ago, in 2004. Ten years later, I became a U.S. citizen. After living here for so long and traveling all over the country, I feel that these musical traditions have become a part of me, and that I've become a part of the American classical music tradition. So, it seems like a great time to record an American album!
Laurie Niles: It's a vast country, with 50 states - what parts of America are represented in this album?
Augustin Hadelich: You can experience American Road Trip as a journey through America, from New England (with Amy Beach, Charles Ives) down to New York City (Bernstein), to Louisiana (Perkinson), to the frontier (Copland), the West Coast (John Adams and Stephen Hartke). Some of the pieces are wonderfully evocative — the feeling of driving along wide-open roads of John Adams' "Road Movies," the summer heat and religious rapture of the slow movement of Ives' Sonata No. 4 (titled "Children's Day at the Camp Meeting"), the "Rodeo" madness of Copland's "Hoe-Down"!
Laurie Niles: I know you have performed frequently with Orion Weiss - how long have you been performing together, and what was his role, as far as conceiving this album?
Augustin Hadelich: Orion Weiss and I just barely missed each other at Juilliard (he graduated in 2004; I arrived that year), but we finally met in 2009 at a chamber music festival. We played quite a lot of chamber music together over the years, but it was only about 5-6 years ago that we started playing recital tours together. Since then, his sense of humor and positive attitude got us through some grueling tour schedules!
When I thought about an American album, I instantly knew I wanted to tackle that with Orion! We realized immediately as we started brainstorming the program that it could not be a complete overview of American music — that would have filled at least three CDs. So, Orion and I played through a lot of music to find a selection that features long works, short works, some well-known pieces, but also a lot of works that I believe need to become part of the violin canon.
I stayed away from some of the most obvious choices (Gershwin arrangements by Heifetz, for example), but did include some audience favorites like Copland's Hoe-Down and Kroll's Banjo and Fiddle — I just have so much fun playing those! I included works by Coleridge-Taylor, Perkinson, Eddie South and Daniel Bernard Roumain that I learnt fairly recently and that are not as well-known yet. I didn't want the album to be a collection of short musical "bonbons" though, so I included larger, more complex works as well: the fourth sonata by Charles Ives, "Road Movies" by John Adams (which Orion and I have performed in recital many times), and Stephen Hartke's "Netsuke," which is the longest and most complex work on the album.
Laurie Niles: How did your impression of "American music" change, once you moved here to the States? Do you remember how you felt about it before?
Augustin Hadelich: It's incredible to me how exotic and obscure a lot of major American composers are in Europe. A few of them are well known, but for a long time they were not taken so seriously. It was after I moved to America that I got to know the American repertoire much better. I became a huge fan of John Adams and have listened to his massive orchestral pieces many times. I learnt the Barber concerto and the Bernstein Serenade.
Over the years I also fell in love with the popular music traditions of America, not only Jazz but also Country Fiddle music, which is ideally suited for the violin and only rarely heard in classical concert halls. In the album I include my own arrangement of the tune "Wild Fiddler's Rag."
Laurie Niles: Tell me all about imitating Jimi Hendrix and an electric guitar - had you listened to much Hendrix before embarking on this piece? You really get some great effects! How did you do it?
Augustin Hadelich: When I was at Juilliard, I had a roommate who was a huge Hendrix fan, so I got to know Hendrix's music. It was definitely a challenge to get the right sound, the right kinds of slides and other sound effects that one hears in electric guitar playing, but I did have a pretty good idea what Daniel Bernard Roumain was going for.
Laurie Niles: I've heard much of this music, but I'd never heard "Netsuke" by Stephen Hartke (b.1952) - how did you discover this piece? Were you a part of its commissioning? Do you personally know the composer?
Augustin Hadelich: I have met Stephen Hartke at the Aspen music festival, but Netsuke wasn't written for me. I first heard it in Jennifer Frautschi's recording and was really struck by it. Netsuke are Japanese statuettes that each depict a character or a scene. Hartke uses all kinds of complex avant-garde techniques and effects to describe these scenes, but he uses them so naturally and evocatively. It's almost cinematic, how vividly one can see the depicted scene, whether it's a monster that munches on nightmares, a thief getting chased and then beaten, or (one of my favorite movements) a bunch of demons gleefully carrying a rich man to hell, to a jazzy beat.
It's so much fun. It's also incredibly difficult, especially rhythmically — when I first saw the score, I was shocked how complicated some of it is. But the result sounds very natural, convincing and brings each little vignette to life, that it's worth the effort!
Laurie Niles: Howdy Forrester's "Wild Fiddler Rag" requires a really subtle and fast kind of swing - the same is true of the Louisiana Blues Strut, and actually also of your new encore arrangement of "Orange Blossom Special."
I'm getting the idea that you really dig playing bluegrass and fiddle music... am I right? :) Did you ever play anything "fiddley" before coming to America? What has pulled you deeper into this kind of music? What were your strategies for really getting into that style?
Augustin Hadelich: Totally unrelated to my violin playing, in 2002 I saw the Cohen Brothers movie, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" The music just blew me away. Later that year, I played for the first time in Louisville, Kentucky - in one of my first trips to the U.S. - and I went to a Bluegrass festival. I felt really drawn to the various musical traditions of the American South and West, even though they were also pretty foreign to me at the time. I never really stopped listening to American popular music of various genres, but it was only many years later that I started playing a lot more American music.
One of the general challenges for classical musicians when playing popular music is that we are so used to play rubato in a lot of music that we have to work on the rhythmic stability that's required in other genres.
The rhythmic distortion of swing - which only works if the underlying beat is very steady - is something one can't really explain or teach very easily. You have to pick it up by ear. It can be embarrassing when classical musicians first try to swing, and I think it probably was in my case as well — but after living in America for a while, I knew what it was supposed to sound like. I know it when I hear it! So by the time I started playing 'Louisiana Blues Strut,' I knew when it wasn't sounding right. After playing the piece a lot I eventually got to the point where I had worked out the swing and it felt right.
Wild Fiddler's Rag isn't actually supposed to swing much, but I play it with more swing because my version is solo violin, without the help of guitars to establish the groove.
Laurie Niles: On the album trailer video you said "some of these pieces would qualify as being obscure in other parts of the world" - tell me a little about that - is American classical music little-known in Europe and other parts of the world? Do you ever play American encores when in Europe or Asia? How do they react?
Augustin Hadelich: Even though American culture is absolutely everywhere in the world. In the world of classical music, occasionally there has been a snobbish attitude towards American classical music. I encountered this when I was growing up and am trying to do my part to change it, by often playing American pieces that I love when I perform concerts in other parts of the world.
While Jazz is beloved and known almost everywhere in the world, some other popular American genres (country music for example) are much less known internationally. Even something as famous as Orange Blossom Special isn't known that widely outside of America. It's funny to me that now in 2024, I'm the American violinist playing American encores in Germany, when 20 years ago things were exactly reversed!
Laurie Niles: Tell me about the picture on the cover - where is it, and what about it represents "American Road Trip" for you?
Violinist Augustin Hadelich. Photo by Suxiao Yang.
Augustin Hadelich: The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, with their seemingly endless, open space, are such a stunning place. I know immediately when I saw the photo that it would make a great "American album" cover!
Laurie Niles: And at last, I must ask: Have you ever actually taken a road trip across America? In your 20 years in America and 10 as an American citizen, what are some of the things you've come to love the most about this country?
Augustin Hadelich: I've traveled to almost all the 50 states - I think the number is 48, I'm only missing North and South Dakota - and seen so many places, but I've never actually driven across the country. I should do that one day!
I love how open and friendly Americans are. Over the last 20 years, people have become more divided and polarized, but all in all, Americans have much more that unites them, compared to what divides them. It's easy to forget that in an election year; so maybe American Road Trip can do its small part to remind everyone of shared American culture that we all love.
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Click here for the link to download or buy a CD of "American Road Trip."
You might also like:
- Video Interview with Violinist Augustin Hadelich: About 'del Gesù'
- Interview with Violinist Augustin Hadelich: Bach Sonatas and Partitas
- Violin Master Class with Augustin Hadelich at Colburn
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Replies
Every time he plays...anything! I ask the same thing!
Hot damn! That’s some shredin, I’ll tell ya what!
Listening to that, I have to confess, made me go back and find it with Michael Cleveland on YouTube. That's a violinist I'd love to see you interview, if you haven't yet.
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August 22, 2024 at 11:18 PM · I heard him play "Orange Blossom Special" as an encore this summer and it was a blast. Every time he plays an encore, I'm asking myself, "how did he do that?"