Lunch with the Concertmaster

To say that the California Philharmonic’s Pavel Farkas is a compelling figure is almost an understatement. Whether he is striding across the stage at the Walt Disney Concert Hall moments before a sold-out performance or briskly bridging the distance between the hostess station at Il Fornaio and my table by the window, he is a man who approaches everyday life with the same sense of intensity and passion as is reflected in his enjoyment of all kinds of music. “On occasion,” he confides with a twinkle in his steely eyes, “I even try listening to rap.”

It’s not an admission one would expect from a classically trained violinist who has performed with leading orchestras throughout the world, done scores for major motion pictures, and served as concertmaster for both the Bolshoi and Joffrey Ballets. Farkas congenially credits his eclectic tastes to being a perpetual student of life, enjoying the energy and imagination of young people, and keeping an open mind toward anything new.

The rhythms of rap are fascinating to me,” he says, “but I do have a hard time getting past the lyrics. Much too much violence.” He chuckles. “An odd thing, you might think,” he adds, “coming from someone who once participated in a sport as violent as boxing.”

Though he downplays this disclosure with a modest shrug, Farkas was, in fact, a prize-winning middleweight contender in Europe. “Violence belongs only in the ring,” he declares.

As we place our orders, I introduce him to our server, Venturi, an engaging young man who—upon hearing who Farkas is—eagerly reveals that he has recently started taking music lessons. It is during this exchange there is no mistaking the second calling that so enriches the concertmaster’s world—the role of teacher. (During the week, Farkas holds the position of Artist Professor of Violin and Orchestra Studies at the University of Redlands.)

He listens with rapt attention and encourages the fledgling musician to diligently practice. “And perhaps one day,” he says, “there will be a chair for you at the CalPhil”. I can’t swear to it but I’m pretty sure Venturi’s feet were at least a few inches off the ground for the rest of the afternoon.

I start our interview with a question about his violin, one of several he currently owns. “It’s a Spidlen—a Czech violin that was made in 1943.” It was bought for him, he says, by his grandfather when he was only 14 years old. “That violin has gone everywhere with me! I love the sound and the richness of it.” He goes on to say that the man who made his violin comes from a prestigious line of Czech violinmakers in Prague.

My subsequent visit to their website divulges that the House of Spidlen dates back to the late 1800’s and boasts a prestigious list of world-class clientele.

Farkas comments that a friendship with Premysl Spidlen and his son Jan developed over the years. “Whenever I am home, I go to see him to make any minor adjustments that it needs. He often asks me,” he says with a laugh, “if I would like to sell it back to him!”

He goes on to explain that the value of a violin increases almost threefold upon the death of its maker. “This gentleman is in his 80’s and obviously who knows what could happen in the near future?” Farkas, however, has no plans to part with it. “To me, it’s not only the love of a beautiful instrument but the memories of my grandfather.”

In fond reminiscence, he recalls every detail of the day it was given to him. “My grandfather insisted that I learn to play because he loved music. He paid for my lessons and was very, very supportive of the arts. In my family, you see, everyone played instruments—not professionally, of course, but there was always music in the house. It was my grandfather’s hope that I would become a very good violinist.”

I remark that his grandfather’s wish seems to have come true. He smiles. “I was fortunate in his life that, at 24, I became the youngest concertmaster of a major orchestra in Czechoslovakian history. My grandfather religiously followed my concerts. I would play and look out and he was sitting there. In my mind sometimes I think back and still see him looking very proud and happy and enjoying the music.”

I broach the subject of how much his homeland of Slovakia has changed since 1968. The flood of memories are not held back as he explains what it was like to leave his native country in February of that year. “There was a hope among the people for better days,” he says, “and less intimidation from Big Brother—the Soviet Union—which occupied us for a long, long time.” Farkas himself was bound for Japan—an invitation extended by Dr. Takashi Asahina, the music director of the Osaka Philharmonic.”

I went without any problems,” he says. “It was the Dubcek era which allowed people to go experience work abroad and enhance and enrich their horizons. Now mind you, life in Czechoslovakia in 1968 was very different from life in Japan. In Japan, they were just starting to build up. There were scars in Asia just as there were in Europe and the technology we so now associate with the Japanese was only beginning.”

In an interesting aside, Farkas remarks that he was still performing in Japan during the 1970 World’s Fair. Could our paths have crossed even then? Coincidentally, my graduation present from high school was a month in the Far East. I vaguely remembered an orchestra that was playing Beethoven at the fairgrounds. “Yes,” Farkas nods. “That was probably me.”

He returns to a story began of watching television one evening in Japan. “I didn’t speak the language,” he says, “but suddenly I see a picture of Prague, of people screaming and throwing rocks. I called up my mother and asked her what was going on and did I need to come home. She said to me, ‘If you have any brains left, you are not coming back. The Russians are here and anyone who was for Dubcek will be persecuted.’ The truth is,” he continues, “I was sentenced to 7 years of hard labor in absentia for not coming back to Czechoslovakia. According to the Communist regime in those days, I had betrayed the trust of the people because I sided with the imperialists.”

He paints a picture of unrest that he describes as total terror. “People were being constantly watched, they were disappearing, everything was in upheaval. The propaganda being told to those who had left was to come home and that everything would be fine. In truth, it was completely the opposite. It was a strange time for me because at home I was recognized as a promising young artist and yet where I was, I was now in a world that had never heard of me. I was still the same promising young artist and yet I had to build up my reputation and everything from scratch.”

He shares that his stint with the Osaka Philharmonic became his audition for a transfer to the Radio Philharmonic in Holland. “They were looking for a concertmaster and came to my dressing room to congratulate me. They knew I was Czech and thought perhaps their invitation would give me a chance to return to Europe. This became a welcome situation because problems were emerging with the unions in Japan, causing many of the foreign musicians to have to leave.” He played with the Dutch orchestra for two years prior to coming to America.

I ask him how he’d describe the relationship between the concertmaster and the maestro.

I look at it,” he replies, “that the orchestra players and the concertmaster are an instrument in the hands of the conductor. Although we can many times disagree with the interpretation and musical tastes of the conductor, we are nevertheless the keys on the keyboard that he is playing.” He is blessed, he tells me, to work with a talent like Victor Vener. It’s a friendship, he explain, that goes back to 1976 when Vener was still a French horn player in the movie studios during the period when Farkas was contracted to do scores for them. “In fact,” he says, “I used to hire Victor to work.”

He’s unabashed in his praise of Vener’s ability to make music accessible and fun for those who attend CalPhil concerts at the Arboretum, the Walt Disney Concert Hall and its winter venue at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena. Even as we speak, the CalPhil is readying for its winter season.

Having performed all over the world, does Farkas see a difference between the orchestra scene in Los Angeles versus Europe and the Far East?

Unfortunately,” he answers, “the United States is behind in what I call ‘orchestra culture’. Every city in this country, you see, has a part-time orchestra. The musicians in these orchestras don’t just play for one group because the economics are such that they could not afford not to. Los Angeles alone,” he points out, “has a number of orchestras where, unlike the European traditions, this situation of a part-time body of performers is found. In our schools as well, music programs—arts programs in general—for young people are not what they used to be. To grow up with these things missing in your life, there is not always the motivation to seek them out or to support them in one’s community to the point of full-time employment for the artists.”

He speaks with pride about the University of Redlands School of Music and its performances’ enthusiastic reception by the city. “I have great colleagues and a wonderful director who encourages us to do a lot more 20th century pieces which I really love.” He cites that their recent concerts have been enthusiastically received by their audiences and that he looks forward to doing many more. He is also the concertmaster of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra which goes back to 1952 and has become a popular Redlands tradition.

As a professor, does he regard music as an art or as a science?

In my opinion,” he responds after a thoughtful moment, “you cannot put music—although very closely connected in similarities—to math or any logical science. I’m not saying that science isn’t creative. In research, for instance, there are things being created constantly. In music, though, it’s the emotion and the passion that can be expressed so freely, so deeply—‘Pagliacci’, for instance—that you can cry or smile whenever you hear it played. The interpretation, the expression of someone’s vision through music—or any form of art—is something that comes from inside the individual. It’s not always logical or a formula such as math that every person will always feel exactly the same way.”

Venturi returns to fill our glasses. As he departs, Farkas speaks in fondness of how energizing it is to be around people of Venturi’s age. “The energy they possess, the way they rush into life and embrace it!” I nod in agreement to his observation that surrounding oneself with young people is the ticket to staying young at heart.

So which would he rather have, I ask: a student with little talent but lots of enthusiasm or one who is accomplished but believes he or she already knows everything?

He chuckles. “I’ve had plenty of both on a daily basis!” he replies, confessing that he himself was one of the latter. “When you are 18 to 23 years old and believe you’re very good at what you do, you tend to tell yourself that you have arrived.” He gestures a broad ‘ta-da!’ with both hands. “There’s nothing strange about this. It happens to all of us and will continue to happen to the sons and daughters of every generation.” His own sons, he relates, went through the same thing as well.

I love young people,” he says, “for the innocence they blurt out in those moments of convincing passion or philosophy. When they play music, they say that this is the way they feel and that ‘this is it’, this is how things should be. It’s as if, I think, they believe no one else has ever experienced this moment or this interpretation and that they have come upon something profound that can change humanity. Obviously when they cross the threshold of 24 or 25, they will have different, more settled down ideas than a few years before when they were the smartest thing in the world.”

He admits to thriving in the campus environment and wouldn’t trade it for anything. “Our youth should not be underestimated. In many ways, they are much more advanced in their thinking than we were at their age. Our generation, however, grew up much faster than young people nowadays. When I was 23 or 24 years old,” he offers as example, “I was already accomplished. I knew what I wanted to do and I went for my goal. Luckily, I achieved that goal. In my master program at Redlands, I have people who are much older than I was. They’re between jobs, their goals are not sharply defined.”

He cites that some of them had moved away from home, only to move back to their old rooms when life did not deliver what they had expected it to. “Maybe it’s the problem of parents,” he opines, “that they have raised a generation that is more comfortable relying on them for longer that the people of my generation relied on ours.”

He segues to more stories of his family upbringing. “Food-wise, money-wise, security—these were not things in abundance where I grew up. World War II was very bad for Europe and it took a long time for its people to recover from the scars. Then came the terror of Communism which devastated Czechoslovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe for 40 years. Czechoslovakia—prior to these things—was one of the leading countries in technology and culture. The progress of having to rebuild, of people having to go without what they needed, was a long process.”

He reflects a moment, as if lost in memory. “It was because of these things—this hardship—that we had to grow up faster, to be responsible, to find our place and establish ourselves. The generation today—they’re good kids, yes—but I sometimes see they lack the direction, the forward-thinking to decide what they want. In a country such as the United States with such a wealth, an excess of opportunities to be able to be what you want, I shake my head at how—in their mid-20’s or older—they don’t know how to take even the first step.”

He grins in pride that his own sons are independent men of accomplishment—a doctor of pharmacology, a lawyer, and a CPA.

My life is so full, so enriched with a good family, exceptional colleagues at the CalPhil and at Redlands. I think of the many places I’ve had the chance to sit in the first chair and to play solo engagements—Russia, Japan, Beijing, Shanghai, Egypt.” (Portugal and Greece, he notes, are the only two countries he’s never played in.) “There are times in my life when I think of various losses or disappointments. We all do. But life has been so incredibly wonderful and fulfilling that it’s hard to stay in a sad memory for very long. Every day there is always something new—someone new to meet or a new piece of music that catches my ear and doesn’t go away. What can be better than knowing every day you will be waking up and doing something you love!”

So what does the concertmaster listen to when he’s not performing or teaching?

I recognize only two types of music,” he says. “The one which grabs my heart and the one which leaves me completely indifferent.” In any given moment, he says, he can be listening to a great classical piece by Mozart, switch over to Marvin Gaye or George Benson, listen awhile to Mahler and wrap up with jazz.

To me, jazz is one of the most intellectual expressions of our time.”

I close the interview by asking him if there’s a particular composer in history he would most like to have lunch with. He laughs heartily. “Such a fantastic question!” he says. “But I would need at least five lunches, perhaps more.” Mozart, however, tops his list. “If for no other reason,” he points out, “than to learn what was behind this rascal personality and total genius in terms of endless invention. He must have embraced life with both arms, I think, and squeezed all that he could from it.” He smiles. “That is something I could relate well to…”

For ticket information on CalPhil’s upcoming season, visit www.calphil.org.