In November of 2019, the violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv releases a recording of “Mendelssohn Concertos” on Brilliant Classics (95733). In this Insider Interview we spoke to Ms. Ivakhiv about how she started playing violin, the inspiration behind recording these particular concertos and more.
How old were you when you started playing the violin? Tell us some of your first memories of your interest in music.
According to my mother, who is a piano teacher, I sang in tune since I was 2 years old. Mom says I would repeat melodies upon hearing. At the age of 6, my parents sent me to audition at the Special Music School for Children with Extraordinary Abilities in Lviv (that is the name of the school dedicated to training very young musicians).
I thought I was auditioning to enroll as a piano student. But the auditioning committee decided the violin will be a better fit for me, so I was assigned to this beautiful string instrument. At first, my mother was upset and wanted me to switch to piano, but then decided to let me try the violin. It was a lucky coincidence and I can’t imagine my life without the violin.
Your education path was fairly unusual: raised in the Ukraine, undergraduate studies at Curtis, earned your master’s degree at the Music Academy in Lviv in Ukraine, and back to the US for your doctorate at Stony Brook University. What differences are there between European and American pedagogy methods? What takeaways do you have from studying in these two diverse cultures?
My parents are both educators and wanted me to be exposed to both European and American schooling systems. (I also think they wanted me to have an excuse to come and visit them when I was coming to the Conservatory to take exams.)
I am very grateful for my education at Curtis and consider myself American trained. Studying with the luminaries such as late Joseph Silverstein, late Rafael Druian, Pamela Frank and Philip Setzer shaped me as a musician and made me who I am today. Also, at Curtiswe were exposed to phenomenal faculty (Gary Graffman, Ida Kavafian, Otto Werner-Mueller to name a few) as well as supremely talented fellow students. The whole atmosphere made the education at Curtis priceless, learning equally from both faculty and guest artists, as well as our peers.
My parents instilled in my brother and I the importance of higher education and reaching our furthest potentia. My father has a Doctorate and he was thrilled when the opportunity came up for me to pursue a doctorate at Stony Brook. Pamela Frank brought this idea to me and I was thrilled to continue my studies with her. It was a great way to continue my education and further my experience – it’s where I met and studied with Philip Setzer, Gilbert Kalish, Ani Kavafian and Colin Carr. Coming from a small boutique conservatory (Curtis) to Stony Brook was a shock at first. I was not used to a large campus and felt lost and out of place. But it prepared me for the University life I lead now. The Stony Brook experience was priceless and I am very grateful for it!
You lead a dual life as a concert violinist and a college professor. How do these two aspects of your career inform one another?
I enjoy teaching very much and learn so much from my students. I feel a strong responsibility to share the knowledge I gained from my teachers and pass it on to a new generations.
I demonstrate while teaching and try to apply what I preach into my own playing. My students appreciate the fact that I am a performing artist and they often attend my concerts. My students are also aware that performing is like breathing to me. It is a way to express both myself and the ideas and feelings the composers intended to be shared. I will admit it does get challenging at times combining performing and teaching on the scale I do. But I do like a challenge…and both are very important to me.
For your latest CD, you recorded Felix Mendelssohn’s double concerto for violin and piano in its later arrangement by the composer, with winds and timpani added to the original string orchestra version. How did you discover this arrangement, and why did you choose it over the original?
I performed the Double Concerto a number of times over the course of the past few years. I love the work! But for all of these performances I played with the string orchestra, not the full orchestra. I only learned about the existence of the full orchestra version two years ago from my colleague, the conductor Theodore Kuchar. Ted is known for finding treasures and obscure and forgotten works. Somehow he came across the score of the full orchestra version and brought it to my attention. After doing some research, I was able to find only 3 recordings of the full orchestra. Perhaps there are more now, but at the time there were only three. So making a record with the orchestra version seemed very appealing. It does sound much fuller and richer with the full orchestra. It is a beautiful piece and I love performing it!
The other work on your new CD is an early violin concerto by Felix Mendelssohn. What drew you to this work?
I was looking for pieces written for solo violin and chamber orchestra because I wanted to have a few pieces in my repertoire that I could perform with my students in run-out concerts. Maestro Kuchar brought that piece to my attention and suggested I make an album with this violin concerto and the double concerto on it.
Inviting Antonio Pompa-Baldi to be a part of the project was suggested by Ted as well, since Antonio and Ted have collaborated many times. A few years back Iplayed chamber music with Antonio, and I remember admiring his musicianship and talent very much. I think the three of us had a good chemistry while working on the album.
This Mendelssohn album, along with your next, forthcoming recording of works by Haydn and Hummel is part of your Singles and Doubles project. Tell us how you came up with this project, and how both of these albums figure in to it.
Ted Kuchar, again, was the source – he suggested the Hummel and Haydn Concertos to me. Ted has a talent of finding the pieces that are not overplayed and will be fresh and interesting to the listener. The combination of the instrumentation: solo violin, solo piano and orchestra was very appealing to me.
Lately I had been playing other double concertos with Dutch cellist Joachim Eijlander and American cellist Sophie Shao, and I must admit it is nice to collaborate with another instrument in concert and make music with another soloist on stage (besides the orchestra and conductor). Antonio, Ted and I recorded Haydn and Hummel on the same trip as Mendelssohn Concertos, and the Haydn and Hummel Album will be released on Centaur in spring 2020.