Ganges flows into Mozart

By WILLIAM DART

Gilles Apap is so relaxed it is frightening. The French violinist, who is touring the country with the NZSO Chamber Orchestra giving us Mozart Around the World, has been a Californian for around a decade now - and it shows.

The move across the Atlantic seems to have been more like the consummation of a romantic passion than mere emigration.

He was drawn to America, he says, "because she was beautiful. I married her and ended up living in Santa Barbara."

A short pause, and Apap continues. "But then I divorced her and moved north to Arroyo Grande, a beautiful white-bread kind of town."

The metaphor seems a little confused but it is obvious that, white, rye or whole grain, California offers an attractive lifestyle.

The beaches mean he can hone his surfing skills "on a boogie board with quite a lot of fins" and Apap has made himself into quite a fixture on the local music scene.

You'll find him fiddling on a CD by Santa Barbara bluegrass legend Peter Feldman and there's some shapely solo work with the Santa Barbara Symphony on its 1999 recording of music by Silvestre Revueltas.

This is his second visit to New Zealand: last year saw him leading the NZSO-CO in a fairly kooky take on Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Over the week he gives five concerts running up from Palmerston North to Auckland.

On the bill this time around are Kreisler, Bartok, Sarasate together with the Mozart G major Concerto. And be prepared for a Mozart cadenza with a difference - Apap is just as likely to give it a Celtic twist or transport us to the banks of the Ganges.

"I've always been interested in different types of fiddling and styles of music and one day while I was goofing off, I thought it would be fun to incorporate them in this cadenza.

"It started off as a game trying to see what you could do with a simple little Mozart theme."

It's a game that developed into the 10 minutes of Apap's Mozart Around the World, an energetic workout on a theme from the same concerto, redone in the musical styles of New Orleans, Ireland, Romania and India, which is also being offered on the New Zealand programmes.

The man has his detractors, some of which he gleefully publishes on his website gillesapap.com but, he stresses, "for people who have never been to a classical music thing, I think I'm the right guy for it. If they get into my world for a while I don't think they can be bored".

Gilles Apap is certainly an astute salesman.

He records and distributes his own CDs - four will be on sale after the concert - and he has just made a DVD documentary in India: "the story of a Frenchman from Santa Barbara who goes in search of a raga."

On the concert circuit, he's been playing with the Israel Philharmonic ("in Tel Aviv on the eve of the Iraq war"), the Russian National Symphony and the Berlin Philharmonic. "They're all the same," he laments, "the musicians have been playing in orchestras too long, sitting on their chairs. We need to revive the sparkle."

This man is the nearest to a new age Paganini we will ever see.

"Touring is like a paid vacation and that's the only way I can conceive it. I am a lucky man and a happy camper right now. I've made myself a good space in life," he says.

One parting question. What were his feelings about Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent victory in the polls? There's a nervous laugh. Suddenly, everything is not so sunny and resolutely upbeat. "Hollywood keeps going," is his considered response, "I don't know what to tell you, sir, the world is just controlled by some nonsense kind of thing. It's a little mad."

Performance

* What: Mozart Around the World, with Gilles Apap and the NZSO Chamber Orchestra

* Where & when: Great Lake Centre, Taupo, tonight; Hamilton's Founder Theatre, Thursday; Auckland Town Hall, Friday, all at 8pm