‘Oh God,” groans Christian Tetzlaff. “This is going to be a huge lecture.” At which point the star violinist launches into a potted history of 20th century music, along the way touching on World War II and the mindlessness of Nazism, the philosopher Theodor Adorno, composers in ivory towers, and conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt. It’s Tetzlaff’s long but fascinating way of explaining why Germans never played Elgar but now they do, especially the Violin Concerto.
“It’s become my favourite thing to play and sums up late-Romantic violin writing in a fantastic way,” says Tetzlaff, who performs the work in Wellington and Auckland for the NZSO’s The Planets concerts. He admits he wasn’t always a fan, having grown up with ponderous mid-century recordings. “A lot of older recordings take 55 minutes; it made it difficult to like the piece.”
These days, most interpretations fall between 45 and 50 minutes, closer to Elgar’s famous 1932 recording with Yehudi Menuhin. “If you go with the metronome markings, it turns into something different.”
As well as playing Elgar, Tetzlaff is also giving a one-off solo recital of Bach and Bartók in Christchurch. Among the music he’ll perform is the piece many have called the greatest work ever written for unaccompanied instrument: the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita No 2. Tetzlaff’s Bach is taut and unsentimental. He’s not afraid to play ugly, but his Chaconne dances as a partita should and the result is compelling. He plays Bach on a modern violin – less and less common these days – having many years ago ditched a multi-million-dollar Stradivarius in favour of a 21st-century Reiner costing less than $20,000. Tetzlaff is also less convinced about the differences between playing Baroque and modern music than some scholars claim.
“People make more out of that than there is,” he reckons. “Schumann and Mendelssohn were contemporaries but I can’t think of two more different composers. With, say, Bartók and Bach, I don’t think you read the music in a completely different way. Harmonically there are different things, but you have to be the one who finds the story behind the music and translate it to violin.”
Having established himself as one of the world’s top violinists, Tetzlaff can pick and choose his concerts but he says he’s reached the stage where home and family take precedence. “I very much like performing but I’m a father and a loving husband, so being a violinist doesn’t define me. At 58, one is in a different place than 28. Playing is still wonderful, but if you mess something up, your life isn’t over.”
Christian Tetzlaff, The Piano, Christchurch, November 20. The Planets: Elgar and Holst, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, November 22; Auckland Town Hall, November 23.
