He is the most discreet of the violin greats, but his legacy is already one of the most impressive in the history of recording for his instrument. THE Violin Concerto by Brahms that Frank Peter Zimmermann will play in Montreal this week, he recorded it in particular with Bernard Haitink in Amsterdam, one of his many records which stand out in the light of the evidence.
Speaking for the first time with Frank Peter Zimmermann is like speaking with a long-time companion: we seem to be freely discussing shared musical experiences, the same people we have encountered throughout our lives and passions. identical childhood or adolescence which led us to similar conclusions.
Masters and path
In the instructions for the 30-CD Warner box set which contains the complete recordings made for EMI, we learn that Frank Peter Zimmermann has the ability to almost infallibly recognize the great violinists of the past blindly. “Until the age of 16, I gorged myself on recordings of the great masters of the violin. After 16 years, I almost only listened to the piano! But I had heard everything I could from Stern, Heifetz, Szeryng, Kogan, Elman, Milstein, etc. My father had a wonderful record collection and I covered everything about my idols. At the age of 15, I had found my three models: Milstein, Oïstrakh and Grumiaux,” the violinist tells Duty.
Frank Peter Zimmermann considers this identification important at that age: “It is not to compare me to Beethoven, but Beethoven, at 11 or 12 years old, had tackled the Well-tempered keyboard by Bach. This is important: you have to be shown a path. »
When asked if posterity has been unfair to a violinist, Frank Peter Zimmermann answers no: “Certainly, Grumiaux was not really recognized in the United States. And even if I am not a fan of Szeryng, who is admirable violinistically, but whom I find a little pedantic, we can also notice that compared to the quality of his playing, he did not have the very long career of Stern or Oistrakh, for example. But roughly speaking, the giants of the past, from the time when know-how took precedence over knowledge, have been recognized. »
Glorious period
Speaking of recognition, Frank Peter Zimmermann was fortunate to be spotted and recorded early on. His recording career is however split into two parts: youth, with EMI, from 1984 to 2001, and a radiant maturity, currently captured by the Swedish label BIS.
“I experienced the glorious period of the compact disc, in the 1980s and 1990s, at Electrola [EMI Allemagne] and EMI, with even recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic [Brahms sous la direction de Wolfgang Sawallisch, Tchaïkovski avec Lorin Maazel]. Then there was a moment when the bank, which lent me my Stradivarius, financed recordings, because at Christmas it offered a CD to its customers. Some appeared at Sony at the turn of the millennium. The relationship with Robert von Bahr of BIS, whom I had known for some time, began with the Zimmermann Trio. One thing led to another and we developed other projects. It doesn’t pay much, but I have the chance to work with Hans Kipfer, a wonderful artistic director, and it has become like my “second recording career”. »
This journey was enriched by concert recordings, and not the least. The Berlin Philharmonic, in honor of a relationship spanning several decades, published in 2021 a double album of concertos by Beethoven (Harding), Berg (Petrenko) and Bartók (Gilbert). The concertos of Beethoven and Brahms exist under the direction of Bernard Haitink, the Beethoven with the Staatskapelle of Dresden by Profil, the Brahms published by the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam. From the Sony interlude we have concertos by Tchaikovsky, Bruch, Busoni, Britten and Szymanowski, the masterpiece of this period being the Britten/Szymanowski.
If the number of reference discs, such as the Beethoven sonatas with Martin Helmchen at BIS, the violin concertos by Bach or Mozart at Hänssler or the transcription for trio of Goldberg Variations of Bach at BIS, goes beyond the fingers of both hands, it is because, for this musician, music is a concentration, an asceticism. This is evidenced by the approach to his “pandemic project”: Bach’s work for solo violin. “I had not internalized this repertoire, I had not even played it in full, because it intimidated me. Of the six works (three sonatas and three partitas), I had “three and a half” in me. In the two years of the pandemic, or sometimes for five or six months, we had nothing, so I focused on it almost exclusively. I went on long hikes with my wife, and the rest of the time I studied the Sonatas and Partitasnotably the Partita in B minor (No. 1), which I thought I would never play in my life as I found it so dry and difficult. And there, I started to think: eight movements in two parts and each part having a repeat that must be decorated; there was a lot to design. I was nervous, because we don’t know where we’re going. But I am satisfied,” summarizes the one who contrasts this musical battle with the “happy sharing” of Beethoven’s sonatas with Martin Helmchen.
Netherlands and Paganini
From his collaboration with Bernard Haitink, who became a friend in 1989, Frank Peter Zimmermann remembers the aura of the conductor and his way of standing in front of the orchestra, “silent and internalized”. “He told me that he was second violin at Dutch Radio when, in the 1950s, he took a masterclass in conducting given by Ferdinand Leitner. It was Leitner who told him: “My young sir, you have this talent to lead an orchestra simply by your attitude.” And it was like that until the end. Haitink didn’t do much, he didn’t interfere in the music. His manner was internalized and touching. He said “music is a mystery” and said little about it. »
Ironically, Haitink’s concertmaster at the Concertgebouw, Hermann Krebbers, was Frank Peter Zimmermann’s master. Krebbers’ recordings were recently reissued by Eloquence in Australia, as already mentioned, and positively surprised us. His student was happy to find them: “Krebbers taught me a lot, especially stage presence. He was there for my first Brahms, at 17. He said to me: “You know how to do it, the dish is ready, but we’re going to make it a little better: I’ll bring you the parsley and the spices.” Krebbers, in Italy, was seen as the Dutch Paganini. »
Paganini is the opposite of Frank Peter Zimmermann’s image: “There were two moments in my life when I didn’t really decide on artistic things. First the Whims by Paganini, a wish of the record company Electrola, which I did not want to record, but which, I must admit, boosted my confidence when I was 19 years old. Subsequently, there was the Concerto by Tchaikovsky, when I was 22, with the Berlin Philharmonic. Since then, everything I do has been rehearsed, planned, tested for years. And now, in any case, with hindsight, the projects include works matured for at least 10 or 15 years and experimented in various ways. With BIS we have just had two wonderful projects [concertos de Stravinsky, Bartók, Martinů] with the Bamberg Orchestra, which is in excellent form under the direction of Jakub Hrůša and of which my son has been the concertmaster for a year. »
The next project will be Sonatas for violin and piano by Bartók with the Ukrainian pianist Dmytro Choni, for whom Frank Peter Zimmermann is full of praise. He will then discuss the Brahms sonatas, but not the ones we expect: “Brahms himself made a version for violin of the Clarinet sonatas op. 120. He changed the piano part since the violin plays higher, which shows that he fully understood this version. » The pianist for this disc has not yet been chosen. He will probably accompany Zimmermann for the rest of things, in Schumann, Schubert and Szymanowski.
It is a privilege to see this violinist again in Montreal who had not visited us since May 2000, where he played the Concerto in memory of an angel by Berg under the direction of Charles Dutoit.