Everyone–absolutely everyone–who likes this blog should see
a video
of violinist Gilles Apap playing his cadenza (surely
improvised) in the last movement of Mozart’s third violin concerto. The video
is on YouTube; many, many, many thanks to the good
soul who posted it there. (And also to the two people who e-mailed me, urging
me to see it.) The cadenza must be about eight minutes long, and involves gypsy
music, whistling, tapping on the violin, music for the
orchestra as well as the soloist, and a lot of joy. style='mso-spacerun:yes'> The joy is one reason the whole thing works. It’s excessive; that’s easy to say. It goes on too long. It’s self-indulgent. All of these will be common reactions. It has nothing to do with Mozart. This last thought kept going through my head, even though, moment by moment, I loved everything class=SpellE>Apap does. (It’s all a kind of silly shtick, too. I forgot that objection.) But this thought–that the video has nothing to do with Mozart–turned out to be completely, utterly, shockingly wrong. Because when the cadenza finally ends, and Mozart’s music comes back, Mozart’s ending sounds astonishingly right, as if Mozart wrote it expressly to follow everything class=SpellE>Apap has just played. I’ve elsewhere written (in a recent style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Wall Street Journal review–or maybe it hasn’t appeared yet) that these concerti are essentially entertainment, and that they just about require the soloist to improvise embellishments. I didn’t quite imagine the embellishments in the style(s) of Apap’s cadenza, but that turns out not to be a problem. The spirit matters more than the letter, and Apap’s spirit is exactly right. Proof of that: the Mozart sounds fabulous, played with complete delight. And for once, the piece (one of the concerti that Mozart ends with a light rondeau movement, which often sounds too light to be a proper ending) really sounds like it finishes decisively. Details: Apap, from what I see on his website, seems to be playing with the Sinfonia Varsovia. He doesn’t seem to own or control the video; he’s not even sure where to find it. And I can’t tell from the YouTube page whether the cadenza is the entire video, or whether someone filmed the entire concerto, and this is just an excerpt. But we can href="https://www.west.net/~apapaziz/html/form.html">buy CDs of the entire concerto performance, and when I get back from vacation, I’m going to order one.
Also, have you read what Menuhin wrote to Apap? (from the latter’s website) –
“The different folklorique music, particularly that of people who, sadly, are on the path of extinction, it’s up to us to assimilate it, it’s up to us to be inspired by what it has to offer, by its characteristics, and to grant this music a new resurgence by way of the creative imagination of musicians who are able to play anything. For me, you are the example of a musician of the 21st century. You represent the direction in which music should evolve; on the one hand, the patrimonial respect of the precious classical works, presenting them in the correct style and with the intense communication that was appropriate to their time; on the other hand, the discovery of contemporary [popular] music and its creative element, not only in the improvisation, but also in the interpretation.”