We can listen violinists, who play with a high level like Perlman and have the gift, but little ones, than play with the soul like him. He is the best for me! 🎻 By other hand, he gets a connection between him and the spectator. 🎻
I don't think it is just "the internet" that started the uniform sounding violinist culture. I think it begin when classical music was starting to exist more on recordings than in the concert hall. I am always shocked to see great concerts with great artists which are not fully booked, meanwhile everybody is listening to recordings of xy at home... as if was the same!? That to me is the main difference between the generation of Heifetz, Milstein or even earlier of Elman, Joachim, Sarasate etc. in these days as an artist or listener you had one chance and that was the concert hall, people found ways to really touch the hearts, because there was just one chance, you had to take risks. Nowadays you go in the studio and work out a musical sounding recording just before the producers put the patchwork together. Everything is perfect, everything is boring. The concerts are more for the money and promotion of the mostly uniform sounding recordings. At least the internet made it possible to learn from the true great masters and artists of the past instead of just falling for the advertisement of the "new raising star" every year. Now we can at least listen to rare recordings from Hassid, Francescatti, Milstein and so on, who really had a different approach to the ritual of music. This question is important! Because it is easy to manufacture something which will please the concert critiques, but to really touch the heart, there must be more than a good plan. At competitions when I listen to many violinists I usually find one or two who sound really captivating to me and sometimes they even don't make it to the final and boring violinist xy who played the least wrong notes and had the right professors win. So in the end our "problem" is homemade. In contrary I look forward to the next generation of violinists, who are often times much more knowledgeable in regards of old recordings and also more open minded. Maybe they can put the classical music back into the position it deserves. Also that a new generation of good teachers will be put in charge in replacement of egotistical professors, who are more interested in their own name than in their students or teaching in general. There are so many false Prophets and self crowned kings out there, who wouldn't stand a slight chance facing a unbiased audience. Maybe the situation is a little better in New York than in Europe as I think that the admiration of great artists and teachers is higher in parts of the US than it is in general here in Europe.
Wow! Beautifully stated and I totally agree with you! Can you imagine a young Fritz Kreisler, Ivry Gitlis, or Aaron Rosand competing in today’s over-hyped competitions? They wouldn’t make it past the 1st round! Idiosyncratic artists like these haven’t a chance, yet they are still remembered by the hearts they touched and the minds they inspired. There are some wonderful young violinists out there today, but we are indeed living in a different world and the path to “success as a soloist” is not as clear cut as it used to be. It’s never been easy for any generation. Even poor Wieniawski struggled to earn enough money to feed his family!
@@alexsaldarriaga8318 First of all thank you! Secondly regarding your sentence "They wouldn’t make it past the 1st round!" I know what you mean, but we should not forget that the old greats all had top of the line violin technique and could most likely outplay even today's competitors just technically, if they would care/prepare. Especially Kreisler was out of his mind as a violinist technically. Not only one of a kind, but also one of a kind in simple quality and skill. He was the standard in his era. Or Elman.. what a violinist! People tend to focus on the different sounds they made but tend to forget just how brilliant some passages sound in the generation around Kreisler and shortly after. There are still very few who took the violin playing to another level in recent generations violinists. Even technically in major competitions like Sibelius Competition or Queen Elisabeth Competition the finals are not all played perfectly, quite the contrary. It is rather easy to determine who played the "best", but still there are are other factors like professors or biased jury members as well. That is the main problem in the end. You can play out of this world and still score second place... which sounds good, but if you really are at that level, you know when you deserve first place! Everyone in their right mind knows when there is something fishy going on. I agree with you, that for a Kreisler, Early Gitlis and Rosand it might be impossible to win a competition without Vitamin-B (as we say in Germany), because it is impossible anyways. It's too much about pushing own students.
@@alexsaldarriaga8318 To drop some names of interesting artists I discovered through competitions: Fumiaki Miura (actually scored first place in Hanover Joachim Competition), Tatsuki Narita (scored 2nd place in 2012 Elisabeth after a landmark performance of Paganini Concerto), Artiom Shishkov (also played 2012 Elisabeth competition and years earlier Joachim in Hanover), Ayana Tsuji (Played last Joachim Competition scored 3-6 in finals I think. But haven't heard such an amazing sound in a while), of course Leonidas Kavakos was also "discovered" in Sibelius competition, which he shared first place with Ilya Kaler I think. Competitions are always good platforms to discover new artists, but the placements are often times better to be forgotten.
It is a shame that the old school style is becoming lost and commonly shunned. Playing without a SR and using more subtle and varied vibrato and glissando are forbidden by many teachers and penalized by competition judges. Modern playing is focused on technical perfection and rigid interpretations. True artistic musicality is very rare indeed.
Augustin Hadelich, in my opinion, is one of the few great violinists today whose sound and style is unique and instantly recognizable. It’s a great question, nevertheless, that always sparks an interesting debate among violin aficionados and cognoscenti. I personally asked that same question to Isaac Stern over 20 years ago during a book signing event in Miami and he scoffed at me. He argued that there were many young violinists back then who had unique, individual voices that were readily recognizable after just few notes and I was simply unaware of them. I humbly and respectfully disagreed. I quickly learned how uncomfortable it is to disagree with the great Stern! 😂
Hadelich unfortunately is nowhere near the level of the greats. He is one of the best today for sure, but his right hand sound production is not refined and musical enough. Intentions are there, execution is not .
I don't think Perlman is instantly recognizable the way Heifetz et al are. This is not the say he is not great, but Perlman is more like Szeryng, who in Perlman's own words (in Art of the violin) sounds like "hm I don't know who that is... but it's really good, oh must be Szeryng".
I don't think it was us losing a golden age in classical music. In the olden days, these musicians are less accessible where is now, young artists can have all the social channels and they play to please the audience for likes. Sometimes overexposure makes it less interesting, and over pleasing the audience loses the individuality.
Fifty years from now, people will be asking why does everyone sound the same, where are the great players of the past, the ones who mesmerize, the Tjeknavorians, the Hadelichs, the Vengerovs, the Ning Fengs, etc. There is a sorting process. We are in the present, listening to many people who likely will be sorted out with time.
