The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 048 Julian Rachlin: The Path to Mastery

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 48. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now your host, Dr. Rene Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. Today, I'm very excited to have the brilliant violinist, violist and conductor Julian Rachlin on the show. Julian is considered one of the most exciting and respected musicians of our time. He's performed as soloist with the world's leading conductors and orchestras and is now himself a respected conductor. Julian is Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, and Christian Sound Symphony Orchestra. He leads the Julian Rocklin and Friends Festival in Palma de Mallorca and is on the violin faculty at the Music and Arts University of Vienna since 1999. Julian can be heard on all the major stages across the world

Starting point is 00:01:18 as a recitalist and chamber musician and his calendar includes performances as both soloist and conductor with orchestras such as the Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Vienna Symphony Orchestras as well as the Moscow and St. Petersburg Philharmonics His recordings for Sony Classical, Warner Classics and Deutsch Gramophone have been met with great acclaim. Julian was in Chicago this week not only playing as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony but also conducting the orchestra and I'm so

Starting point is 00:01:53 grateful that at the end of this very busy week Julian so graciously took the time to sit with me and discuss meticulous practicing, mindful music making and talk about his deep love of the art form. He covers many topics, including studying with Boris Kushner and Mr. Kushner's thorough approach to mastering the instrument, his views on the lifelong path that is growing as an artist, his daily practice regimen, and how playing the viola and conducting have allowed him to explore music from different angles. As you'll see, Julian is a wise musician and an artist with a profound and genuine approach to music making. It's an inspiration and information-packed episode,

Starting point is 00:02:42 and I know you'll love what's ahead. Let's go to the show. Julian Rathlin, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today. I know you've had quite a busy week with the CSO performing and conducting, so I truly appreciate it. It's my pleasure. Julian, for the string players in my audience, I don't think there's a need to introduce you, but for those of the audience member who might not be as familiar with string players, would you please tell us a little bit about your career, how you got started, and how you got to where you are today?

Starting point is 00:03:27 I was born in Vilnius in Lithuania and my parents are both musicians. My mom is a conducting teacher and a pianist, piano teacher and my dad is a cellist, played in the orchestra, one of the orchestras in Vienna pretty much all his life. Now he enjoys his retirement but still is quite active on the cello which I'm very happy about and cello has always been my most favorite instrument funnily enough but it just happened that I yeah got stuck with the violin from age two and a half and but seriously started taking lessons at the age of six and then my family emigrated to Vienna from Lithuania which was back in the 70s part of the

Starting point is 00:04:24 Soviet Union in 1978 and I was three years old and ever since so for the last 41 years I've been based in Vienna Austria which is a wonderful place to live of course especially when you are a musician it's kind of still the city of music and in general city of art it's and apart from that it's a very livable city and yeah I've started actually seriously taking lessons as I said at age six with a Russian teacher by the name of Boris Kushner and he was pupil at the Moscow Conservatoire of Belenki and David Oistrakh and in 1994 I started taking lessons with Pintka Zuckerman in New York for two years and from 1998 I started doing all my

Starting point is 00:05:35 mistakes by myself but of course in our business it's you know clear that we always have to continue learning being curious being on the search and you know it's not like you finish studying and then you know it all you know nothing I I don't think we ever know everything, obviously, and that's what keeps us going, and that is the magic of being in music and dedicating most of your life to music. And yeah, so ever since then, as I said, I've been living in Vienna and I started traveling a lot in, let's say, I don't like the word career so much, but, you know, performing all over the place from a very early age, from age 13 actually. At that time, in Europe, it was a very popular competition called the Eurovision competition. It was popular because it was streamed on practically every European TV channel live. And so in 1988, the competition was held in Amsterdam at the Concertgebouw.

Starting point is 00:07:07 so each contestant represents his her or his country and I was representing Austria and I was for some reason lucky to win it and that was sort of the starting point of me you know being able to go and get to know aeroplanes and what it is to live a life out of you know your luggage packing unpacking and boarding planes and etc etc so it's been a long time on the road many many years and i am still loving it which is wonderful what are would you say some of the habits the practicing approaches that you had as a young kid that would allow you to achieve such a high level of performance you were talking about at the age of 13 what are some of those habits in terms of practicing that you had that

Starting point is 00:08:18 you think I think that I was very lucky with Boris Kushner because I was his first pupil and in a way it was very intense because he had the time he didn't know how great of a teacher he was because he was a young man himself and he also emigrated from Moscow he just started teaching at the Vienna Conservatoire at the time and so I happened to be literally his first pupil and I had lessons I would say five days a week and each lesson lasted between two and five hours oh my goodness yeah so that's of course an incredible luxury because I guess he saw that I was thirsty for information and that I would go home and then to the next lesson you know there was a sort of a result showed so that kept both of us and especially him of course I was a

Starting point is 00:09:26 kid I was like he was not my first teacher I had a lady teacher also a Russian immigrant for the first two years between age six and eight also from moscow from she was teaching there at it's also a famous school it's called the gnesium music school and so the he was my second teacher and um yeah it was really intense and to come back to your question what what it was mainly the focus was not on repertoire on drilling and making me do loads of concertos and pieces you know just you know playing everything you know within a very short amount of time it was maybe little different than other institutions or schools or teachers would do it with with young children you know when I speak to some of my you know colleagues

Starting point is 00:10:42 amazing violinists which had to bring every two weeks a new concerto and for us or for me and my teacher, he did it completely the opposite way. So I remember Wieniawski second violin concerto and Saint-Saëns third violin concerto, we would work on that for four years. And if we would in these three, four, five hours sometimes we would manage one bar or two bars. I mean it was crazy he we would call him my family would call him the doctor because he would just analyze every joint of your body of your finger your shoulder your arms your body the angle of the positioning of the left hand you know the bow changes just everything like under microscope and he would just

Starting point is 00:11:53 do it so meticulously and so I mean many pupils couldn't take it because it was just so slow in a way and just so much into the detail of every note he would he would say one note consists of at least six or seven elements each note so you can imagine and you know lots of colleagues at the time and I'm not going to mention names would kind of make fun of me and saying so like you know after many many years are you still playing Wieniawski and so on and my music was full like you could hardly see the notes on the score because it was just my comments so on every note there were like 20 what 10 to 20 handwritten notes not musical notes comments and yeah that's what i remember from the

Starting point is 00:13:03 beginnings that's fascinating that's really a way to actually get your awareness working from the start which oftentimes with young musicians they're such in a rush to get to the result exactly what you were saying learning concerto after concerto and showing off what they're playing next and maybe engaging in mindless repetition, but this is the absolute opposite approach where everything is… And of course my repertoire was very, very narrow and very small and also a very important element was that my parents never ever forced me to practice, both being musicians. They actually didn't want me to be a musician.

Starting point is 00:13:47 Not because they didn't like music or, you know, like in non-musical families, parents say you have to learn something proper, this is not a proper profession. No, on the contrary. The reason why my parents kind of didn't take me serious from the age two and a half, when I was already obsessed with music until six was because they knew how hard it is to survive as a musician and to be a serious musician. There are no Sundays, there are no holidays, doesn't exist it's not you know a working day is not from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. it's the whole life it's really so much more than a regular profession

Starting point is 00:14:51 right yeah and I kept insisting and only when I was six even I was nearly seven I I think I was six years old and nine months, so nearly seven, pretty late. That's when they saw that, okay, there's no way around with little Julian. We need to, he's so much wanted. And that's when they realized. And of course, then they supported me a thousand percent. But they never, ever forced me to practice. And I think this is one of the most important elements in my life until today.

Starting point is 00:15:33 That's why I love music. With, you know, being 44, having had a 30-something year, what is it, 33-year career, 32, 31 year, now I said the word. and i still feel totally fresh i love traveling i love music i still think that i don't know anything or to rephrase it i am i'm still completely curious and i still want to learn and and uh yeah this is this is a great thanks to to my uh to my parents and to my surroundings to my friends as well who just loved me not for my talent or for my playing or for the achievements or whatever but yeah and how has your practicing approach evolved throughout the years because with

Starting point is 00:16:36 a more active career comes more repertoire and how does that work now now it's very simple i do the 24 Paganini Caprices every day. I would never ever dare playing any of the Caprices on stage because I'm not a Paganini player. This is just my personal opinion because there are so many amazing violinists who can do that. I would not, I would probably be able to play them but not as well as I would expect it from myself. But at home I do it nearly every day and when I do the 24 and you know some Bach obviously and some scales and when I do that then I have access to all the I would say around 40 violin concertos because I work them so slowly at this young age each of them it took years many many years to get the repertoire

Starting point is 00:17:40 but now they're all there not all but you know most of the big ones and also you know contemporary violin concertos from living composers and what have you and and now I can if I'm asked tomorrow to play any of these concertos and I'm in shape and in shape is the scales the the Bach and the 24 Paganini Caprices, I can pretty much play them the day after any of these concertos and and yeah so I'm grateful in a way that it wasn't rushed you know and and the basics are there and thanks to Kushnja, thanks to Zuckerman that was also very important these two years with with with Mr. Zuckerman and his assistant Patti Kopek as well and of course I've been teaching myself since

Starting point is 00:18:41 99 I'm on the faculty in Vienna but I can say that the responsibility lies from a certain age of course more with the pupil than with the teacher the teacher is the teacher and he gives you what he gives you but it is really up to the student to extract and what do you do with the information that you get how do you process it so you know from i would say maybe age 16 17 18 19 something around that for everyone is different it's really the responsibility is much more with the student than with the teacher you can't think that the teacher is going to solve everything for you you you have to solve it with hopefully great information that you get and not just from your teacher but from going to concerts from

Starting point is 00:19:38 sitting at rehearsals from talking to musicians it's like in the medical world the doctors they always talk to each other they always meet at congresses and they exchange information and they learn from each other's experiences and it's something for me always was strange you know the the fact that some musicians are jealous of each other you know the jealousy factor for example my generation lots of us do festivals and we need other great violinists to come and play at our festivals so you know it really changed to the better I think because when I hear stories of what I call the golden age of violin playing sure there were some friendships you know Menuhin and Oistrakh were great friends

Starting point is 00:20:32 but there was also a lot of jealousy around and like people also between conductors between soloists you know they would not communicate at all to say least and and in my generation is different you know most of the colleagues you know if it's Gil Shaham or if it's Maxim Vengerov, Odin Repin, Julia Fischer, Janine Jansson, Hilary Hahn, we all you know respect each other and we or Leonidas Kabakos and Frank Peter Zimmerman, Anne-Sophie Mutter, all of us the big community yes it is absolutely of course we are competitive i mean to to go out there and and and to do what we do of course you have to be tough in some way it is sporty in some way to do

Starting point is 00:21:29 to do a big concerto it's it's like a racehorse in some way yes on the other way you you want to make music you want to have the feeling as if you're playing chamber music yeah at least for me it's that way even a concerto and especially now with me the last 15 years conducting and going more and more into conducting and it's kind of switching now it's now 60% conducting 40% playing the violin and viola but But I get to discover that the solo part is so much less important than I thought it was when I was a kid. I see it much more as a composition, as a symphonic work. And the goal that I pursue with this symphonic work, and I'm talking about the violin concerto,

Starting point is 00:22:36 is to have a feeling that to try to have it played as if you're playing a string quartet or a quintet where it becomes small even if there is 80 people in the orchestra for a big massive concerto to really create a an atmosphere of everybody communicating listening to each other all the different important voices coming out and it's not always the solo violin who has the important voice very often the solo violin accompanies and so yeah it's been and it is a journey and a journey full of discoveries and i never saw myself as a violinist violinist especially because cello is my favorite instrument and that's why i play viola because it's the closest i can get to the cello as a violinist and so i want to experience music from all its different angles and you know

Starting point is 00:23:37 of course viola playing and that is very much also thanks to mr zuckerman who told me you need to play viola it's going to help your violin playing and it's going to make you a better musician and especially in chamber music sitting down and discovering all those great masterworks from the viola it opens up your senses it opens up your ears because suddenly you are not you know playing the first violin and leading but you are you know in the piano quintet you have the cello next to you have the second violin you have the piano behind you depends where you sit I like to sit in the middle and then of course with the conducting it completely changes everything the view and the perception of the pieces that you've been playing so many times and now for

Starting point is 00:24:36 me to play a Beethoven concerto it's a completely different composition or any concerto because I'm much more worried about the second bassoon line. But when I was 13, 15, I had no idea. You know, what you're saying reminds me of a quote from, this was from a Strad interview you had a few years ago, and I just love that. And you said, brush your taste as often as you brush your teeth. And I'd love for you to talk to us just a little bit about that.

Starting point is 00:25:07 But that's not me. That is what Rostropovich told me. and he was told that quote by his dear friend it's hard for us to believe Sergei Prokofiev Prokofiev told the young Rostropovich you have to

Starting point is 00:25:24 brush your taste as often as you brush your teeth basically meaning that if you think that this is the way a piece has to be played you know if you're convinced of something and we need to be convinced

Starting point is 00:25:40 when we go out on stage in that moment for these two hours or half an hour or whatever if it's a recital it's longer if it's a concerto it's 40 minutes 30 minutes whatever it is you have to be convinced that this today that is the truth your your truth but you have to be convinced not arrogant not in an arrogant way because if you are not convinced you will never convince the orchestra or the public

Starting point is 00:26:14 neither of them if you never doubt yourself on stage that's a no-go, right? so it's this fine line of being insecure and doubting yourself doubting everything before and after the concert but never during

Starting point is 00:26:32 but coming back to that quote of Prokofiev I think what he meant is so today you're convinced that this is the truth of how to play Bach or how to play this Mozart concerto any composition but that doesn't mean that you need to be stubborn and think that for the rest of your life it means that tomorrow you are allowed to completely change your view and your opinion about it and you know you should not be embarrassed about changing your taste in music changing your views and not only you must not be embarrassed it is a necessity for us because only like this you can you you

Starting point is 00:27:24 can grow because if everything is yeah that's the way it is and then you're stuck somehow. There cannot be an evolution. You will never be able to grow if you think that everything is great and you found your path and this is the one and that's it for once and for all. So yeah, I always remember this. Try to come back to this quote of Prokofiev and especially coming from someone like Ostrofovich. That's a really good one. Giuliani had a really long day. If I may ask, before I let you go, get some rest.

Starting point is 00:28:10 Do you have an actionable tip that the listeners could try today? I think the most important is to, of course, we all need to have goals and we all want to achieve things and to be successful. But in the end of the day, all of this will only come if you are genuinely obsessed, in a good way obsessed, passionate, let's say passionate about the music. And if you work hard and just focus on the music and on your own personal pace. so you know if your neighbor learns much faster everything it's fine that's his pace and you know just every one of us has their own clock i think this would be the advice is not to look too much left and right look left and right to learn of course look everywhere to learn if if something

Starting point is 00:29:14 fascinates you take it try it out at home but don't spend time worrying about career and i need to win this competition and i need to do this because it's not important important is your own personal development as a musician and if you're doing it well and if it takes a long time it takes many many years but people won't be able to ignore it you are going to get somewhere if you're really serious and passionate and curious about music this is great thank you so much I really appreciate it thank Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with violinist, violist, and conductor Julian Rachlin.

Starting point is 00:30:23 I thought it was particularly interesting and inspiring to hear about his experience studying with Boris Kushnir. I love this focus on establishing strong fundamentals meticulously, thoroughly, patiently, and we see how effective this approach to learning an instrument and viewing music was and how it has stayed with Julian his whole life. I think we need more, so much more of this in music education, because this is mindful, profound learning. And we hear in Julian's testimony how this slow process gives him such a great flexibility right now, how it allows him to, as he says, technically access all the pieces he knows, because he took the time to build a solid foundation and learn the material with depth. I always tell students that shortcuts only lead to dead ends, and that's a great example of how dedication and ultimate patience really pay off in the end.

Starting point is 00:31:33 After the mic was turned off, we talked a little bit more about this metaphor he mentioned of each note having seven elements and of course it can be three elements or 20 elements but the lesson is that it's really important to pay attention to all the little details each note has a beginning a middle an end a dynamic an articulation a function in the phrasing a function in the harmonic progression etc and the more we pay attention to these things the more elevated our playing becomes. And of course, there was a lot of work done on the fundamentals and the technique with scales and exercises and etudes. And Julian mentions the system compiled by Elizabeth Gillills. And I'll put a link of that in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:32:28 But the mindfulness and attention that was put behind everything is absolutely key. I also think he brought up a really important point when he talked about the fact that the responsibility of learning and mastering an instrument and evolve as an artist lies with the student. What he says is so true. And you've heard me talk about this before on the show, but it's really up to the student to extract knowledge and skills from the information that the teacher transmits. Julian talks about how much from a young age he just loved and was obsessed with music and how thirsty he was for more knowledge. And this kind of attitude creates a great symbiotic relationship with the teacher and is really at the core of rapid progress. And as he says, you also need to have the curiosity and the interest and the desire to go further, to go much deeper than that. You want to go to concerts, listen to music, read, and not just about music, but read literature in general, and go to museums and expand your knowledge, your culture.

Starting point is 00:33:41 You want to expand yourself. So it's our responsibility to talk, to reach out to people, have conversations, and cultivate ourselves to grow as people and as artists. artists. Finally, I absolutely share his views on how important it is to find the right balance between being completely open-minded and fully convinced and that we need to know which one we have to be in the moment. It's one of the principles of beginner's mind that, as you know, I believe is at the core of music making. And I love how he presented it to us in the conversation. and what to say about that awesome actionable tip those are wise words to live by for sure so that's it for today you can find more information about julian in the show notes

Starting point is 00:34:31 on your podcast app or at mindoverfinger.com as always i'll have the links to find him on the web and on social media so i hope you'll take a minute to check out his youtube channel follow him on Instagram and visit his website at julianrachlin.com that's j-u-l-i-a-n rachlin is r-a-c-h-l-i-n.com if you found some value in this discussion please share with a friend and if you want to let Julian and myself know that you're listening share a screenshot and tag us on instagram he's julian rachlin and i'm mind over finger and if you're looking for a community of mindful practice enthusiasts join the mind over finger tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash mind over finger tribe we discuss ways to take your practice to the next

Starting point is 00:35:30 level and enjoy the process and until the end of october we talk playing meditation and college pre-screening video strategies. Again, thank you and à bientôt!

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 048 Julian Rachlin: The Path to Mastery

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