Itzhak Perlman- Virtuoso Violinist, I know I played every note - Documentary of 1978

Who's next? Can you imagine what happens if you play like this very, very fast and you have an echo between each note? You can't hear anything. I once played Paganini No. 5 very fast and I once heard a tape of it in a very echoey hall. I know I played every note. But the problem was that I played too many notes. There was a note here and a note there plus these notes. I've got rather large hands and everybody tells me, OK, you've got terrific hands, you should be a cellist, you should be a bass player, you should be a pianist, anything but a violinist. My violin playing business began at the age of three and a half. I heard some violinists on the radio, I think it was Heifetz, and I liked it. And so I said, I'd like to play the violin. Among the great performers, the story is not uncommon. For a young child to hear a musical sound at a very early age and to be so attracted and impressed by it, has to spend the rest of his life pursuing the mysteries of that magical moment. In his mind, Itzhak Perlman has been playing the violin since the age of three and a half and enjoying it. His command of the instrument is second to none and his virtuosity a source of constant delight, particularly in the virtuoso showpieces that have been out of fashion for some years now. He's here playing Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London conducted by Lawrence Foster. Itzhak Perlman was born in Tel Aviv of Polish parents in 1945. At three and a half, he resolved to play the violin and a year later contracted polio. Nobody will ever know to what extent this either hindered or fostered the development of his talent. But by the age of nine, he was already giving concerts and already confronted by the idea that it would be quite impossible for him to have a successful career in the strenuous and competitive world of professional music. I contracted polio when I was four and a half. And looking in retrospect, my parents were just marvelous about the whole thing. Because people's disabilities, especially when they're children, their outlook on life really depends on their parents completely. There is a lot of tragedy among people who are disabled because the parents don't really know how to handle it. A disability is an abnormality just as somebody who is a wunderkind is abnormal. And that's why I'm very happy that I was not a wunderkind because there was one less abnormality in myself. You know, and there was enough abnormalities as, you know, there was never a thought, as there is in so many of these cases, of sending you to one of those institutions, sleeping over and, you know, getting rid of whatever there is in your household that is not usual. There we are. Noah. Hey, hi there. And so I lived in the house. I had friends. I played hide and seek. I went to school like everybody else and I was in the top of my class, which didn't hurt at all. I had a lot of fun. I liked school very, very much. And until I was 13, that was my childhood. You can make a normal situation out of an abnormal situation very, very easily. It has to do with how you are treated, what you're able to do. And in my case, this never really interfered with anything. The talent developed in spite of the handicap, and he began to give concerts and to attract public attention. But the feeling persisted that a full-scale solo career would be quite impossible. Then, one day when he was 13, Ed Sullivan heard him, and invited him to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show on United States television. The opportunity seemed heaven sent, and the whole family moved to New York in search of training and support for what was already unquestionably a rare talent. When I first came to the States, first we lived in a downtown hotel for one day, then another downtown hotel for another day, and then we lived there for a year. Just me and my mother. We had a little kitchen, we lived in one room. And that's when I had my first tutoring to study English. Oh, listen, let me take you to Juilliard, the old Juilliard. I mean, this was my route. This was the route every day, or four, three, four times a week. I used to go to Juilliard, and Juilliard was not at the Lincoln Center. Juilliard was all the way up to 120th Street. And right now it's a different music school. Now it's a Manhattan music school. How did you get to Juilliard? I took a taxi. Every day I took a taxi, right at the corner of the liquor store, you know. And when it used to snow, I slid into a taxi. I used to fall right before the taxi and then slide right into the taxi. Yeah, it was... Those days were... It was really something. How often do you fall down? Well, I'll tell you. Falling down is becoming... I don't mind falling down. What I don't like is almost falling down. Because that's the worst, you know. Because that gets your adrenaline going like mad. And I said, damn, I should have fallen down. I almost fell down, you know. Fall down already. You know, either do something or don't do it. This was it. That's it. That is the building. Now, I would never go through here because there were too many steps, naturally. So I would go through there, where there was not as many steps. And I must say, not as many graffiti on the wall. Not as much graffiti. So this is it. That's my old school. I came to the United States when I was 13. I entered the Juilliard School of Music. And it was an incredible thing because they usually had all those incredible balls that you used to run at Waldorf Astoria hotels and things like that. And it was an unusual way to play the violin because everybody would eat dinner. And then they would finish with the dessert. And then we'd say, okay, let's hear young Pearlman here play the Flight of the Bumblebee and the Bloch Nagoon. And this usually occurred around 12 o'clock at night after everybody was absolutely, you know, like, oh, God, well, who is that now? And so I would go on a makeshift stage, you know, listen to the forks still being collected by the waiters and do my Flight of the Bumblebee. And you know something? There's nothing more unpleasant or more difficult to do that because you know that you're trying to get the attention of the audience. And, you know, at 12 o'clock at night, you know, I was like 14 years old. It's not exactly the greatest thing. And I did that for a few years. And when I made my Carnegie Hall debut, it was a breeze because, my God, I said, I'm actually having people in this hall listening to me. They haven't eaten anything. They haven't had a cocktail. They haven't complained about the hard rolls or the stuffed chicken. They actually came here to listen to me play the violin. And so for me, that was a real luxury. The advantages of the early years were already beginning to tell. Carnegie Hall was a breeze, and he sailed through Juilliard and won the Leventret Award with the same apparent ease, making friends along the way with a fellow violinist, Toby Friedlander. We met at a summer music camp in upper New York State. And it was a Sunday. And Isaac was playing on one of the student concerts that Sunday night. And he played the Cigan, Ravel Cigan. And I went backstage and asked him to marry me. He was 17. It was July 4th weekend, and he was almost 18. His birthday's the end of August. And then, well, about a year or so after we met, he grew up and he became interested in girls and found a girlfriend. And it wasn't me. It was somebody else. It was terrible. So I had to kind of live through that period of time. And it was very difficult because, you see, I was hopelessly in love with him. But he recovered from his, you know, other girlfriend. It took a year or so. And our friendship resumed and it grew and, you know, it blossomed. And really, marriage was the most natural thing. It was not an emotional trauma for us at all. The real change in our lives came when our first child was born. And then things changed slightly. Not that it upset us, it's just that we couldn't sleep till noon anymore. Those days are gone forever. I'm really basically a family man. I love to spend time with my family. And I just cannot conceive of traveling and leaving them to grow all by themselves. As a parent, it's incredible to see your kids grow. And so many of my colleagues, sometimes I speak to, one the other day, he says, my God, he said, before you know it, you miss the whole thing. You just miss the whole thing, you know, that your kids are all grown up and they're away in school. And I'm determined not to do that. And I haven't been doing it. All right, we have a little sack of potatoes here. Hey, hey, what are you doing? I never go to Europe by myself for more than two and a half, three weeks maximum. Whenever I go on a longer tour, I always take the children and Toby with me. Especially in the summers, of course, we all go together. But during the winter, whenever there is a tour that involves more than three weeks, I say, no, thank you. I'd rather not. So that I can spend time in New York with them, which is really the most important thing in my life. And whenever I go away for two weeks or something, I'm always very, very miserable. I really am upset. I'm flying. I hate traveling. I always say that if I could, if I could have a steady job in New York playing the fiddle, I would do it. So as a result of that, as a result of what I do, I really plan my life around my kids' vacations, around my vacations, around their schools and so on and so forth. He is a very normal man. That means he doesn't pick up his dirty clothes and put them in the hamper. That means that a great deal of the time he thinks dinner is going to appear by magic on the table. The children will get home from their various activities because they will fly and no one has to pick them up. And of course, the biggest problem, we can stay up till three o'clock in the morning every night because we don't have to get up, except that I have to get up at half past six. He forgets that the house does not run on magic. The telephones never stop. The doorbell never stops. People are in and out all day long. Everybody feels that they need Isaac and that they need him more than anybody else. Students and managers and recording people and everybody wants to talk to him all the time. And in order to make it a peaceful, comfortable, healthy environment, one has to really think about all the problems and how best to solve them for everyone. He has to have some frustrations because he can't play basketball, he can't ice skate, he can't do lots of things. Now we around him don't feel that because he handles it with his own grace and style. But he must inside, in his soul, want to run across the basketball court. You know, he's such a fan of basketball and so on. I suppose eating helps with that. Is she pregnant? No, she's a boy, dear. The noodles are frying for me in my gown. He dreams about food. He calls me from Europe to tell me what he had for lunch. I think it's nuts, personally. I really do. I got into cooking because I went on a diet. And I explained to you how this happened. You see, the problem with diets are they're really disgusting because you really don't have anything that you want to eat because it's all yucky. It's blech. And one day I said to myself, look, if I can cook myself diet food and I can use certain ingredients that would be tasty and yet still not fattening, it would be terrific. It started with a very nice idea and then it kind of went out of hand. Then I said, well, if I can cook diet stuff, just imagine what I can do with real stuff. So then I started into Chinese cooking. And I really love it. As a matter of fact, on the contrary, when I cook, I eat less. Most cooks have sort of a natural inferiority complex. You know, it doesn't taste as good when you cooked it as when somebody else cooked it. All I do is just taste and make sure that it's OK and then I just sit and relax and watch everybody else eat. Oh, yes. I love performing. It's great. I like the audience. I like to make the audience come to me. I like to go to them. I feel it's a give and take situation. I think that when you play, your personality has to be in the music but you cannot put yourself ahead of the music. The music has to be ahead of yourself. But of course, if you have a personality and you have some sort of a rapport with the audience, it has to show. You really have to have the contact. As a matter of fact, if you don't have that adrenaline working within you, I don't think that you can play so well. I mean, you might as well play in the bathroom or in the kitchen of some places. That's as much excitement as you're going to get out of it. Welcome to St. John's, Smith Square, London and to our Radio 3 lunchtime concert. Our guest today is the violinist Itzhak Pellman who is going to play the partita in E major by Bach. This is the last of the set of three sonatas and three partitas which Bach completed in 1720 when he was employed at Curtin. And now it's with great pleasure that we welcome Itzhak Pellman. All right, Richard. Can we do something? A what? Of this? Kingsway Hall, London to record Beethoven sonatas with Vladimir Ashkenazy. Can you give the fiddle a little more something? Bloom? They've been recording the Beethoven sonatas for some years and are now about to complete the series with the G major sonata, opus 96. Our relationship has been, let's see, quite a few years. Well, almost ten years, maybe more than that. And when I look back, this is like a period in which we grew together. And the way we played together also grew. And I always find that, at least in my case, that there is something extra special that my playing gets when I play with him. Spontaneity is what this is all about. It's true. Naturally. See, I move it a little bit. And I'll do less. We tried each other out to see if it was going to work or not work. And we decided to give it a go. Let's start from something terrific. So we decided to do the Beethoven sonatas. And we're still doing them. You know, it took us, I think, about two and a half years to just do the Kreutz sonata. But that's because it was a growing process all the time. I always find that we always have fights about music, which is a very healthy thing to have. Sometimes, really, like half an hour, we kind of fight very, very hard about just basics of music, which is, I think, the end result of it is growth. So I really appreciate that. If you compare those phrases, those answers, those echoes between the piano and this one, this one's good. Listen to it. Take it! Take it! No, take this one. Right. That's definitely in. No. No, right, for example, here. There's nothing. Yes. Yeah. Do you think you were playing that... I was playing it as hard as I could. No, as hard as I could. Well, maybe too hard. Because I find there's a certain thinness. I mean, we can help a bit there, but we need to. Why is it always me? Why is it never you? It's always me! I've been playing hard, I've been playing soft, I've been playing thin, I've been playing thick. You've been recording thin. The piano is the world, that's what it is. No, no, the piano is beautiful. Believe me, it's gorgeous. It has a gorgeous sound. Gorgeous. Terrific. I made it. London again. The Royal College of Music. Follow the lights. At the end of a memorable and highly successful tour of Europe, with Pinchas Zuckerman. Such a pleasure to see you, sir. Wonderful. Please, keep it up. Very good, very good. Lovely violin. Thank you so much. Here we go. First note. I had a tour with Pinky. That, for me, was the most wonderful tour I've ever had. No, I've got to do this. I can't come in here. First of all, Pinky is such an individual person. Let's not talk about musicianship or anything like this. We take that for granted. But to go on tour with Pinky, it's a riot. It's a gas. It's so much fun. I've known Pinky since childhood, since when Pinky was the ripe age of nine and I was the ripe age of twelve, you know. And the thing is that when we play together on the stage, again, it's something that happens between us, the rapport. The musical improvisation that went on on the stage was something for me that was a very private thing, but yet, of course, it came across to the audience. At least, that's how I felt. And it's also the kind of repertoire that we played, just two violins with nothing else. And there was always a sense of expectancy and, you know, we just had a lot of fun. Aspen, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Home of the Aspen Music School and Summer Festival. And for some years past, the summer retreat of the entire Perlman family. Well, I've heard about this place many years, but, you know, hearing about a place and experiencing a place are two different things. Dorothy DeLay, who was my teacher, she started to come to this place, I think about seven or eight years ago. She said to me, you've got to come, even if it's like for three days, four days. So, one summer, I decided, okay, take the family, come have a little four-day vacation. We stayed for about a week. And at the end of the week, it was the most horrible, difficult departure of my life from any place. I got what they call the Rocky Mountain Fever. It was something that just grabbed you, wouldn't let you go. And it's an experience that caused me to completely change my entire schedule in the summer, my entire life in the summer. Nothing so that we can have... Right? Yes, yes. Arco on the last one. The last... Arco. Now, I want everybody to come in really fortissimo at... That's right. 124. And then you start doing your stuff with the hairpins. But before you just come in really far, especially basses. Can we try that? I still didn't hear the very first in the bass. But 113. 113, please. Okay. Let's start from that one. The big lob. Where is it? Oh. The summer has become all of a sudden something very special, very precious. I try to satisfy myself musically as well as visually. I just take everything in. I soak everything in. What I can tell you is that when my family, my children and Toby go back to New York, the only thing we do is we look forward. It sustains us for the next year. No, no, that was good. That was good. But basically, I just come here to do things musically that I don't do throughout the year, during the season. Now, take your time. Yeah, but see where your bow is. The bow is around here. It's around... You know, it's in down under. You know? Right around here. Yeah, but you see... Now, when last time I told you to hold the fiddle up, you said, thank you very much. Okay? Right there. I don't want to be there. I don't want to be, you know, like that with a... But, you know, you see the thing is that don't dig yourself a hole. You know, don't go... Like that. Right from there. One more time. Same. Right. Now, sing again. No, no. Take a little time. It's the second time. You know? And then go. Then go. But, you know, prepare it. Because this is a completely, you know, completely for virtuoso purposes. So you can take time. Take time. Do it. All right? Same spot. Take your time. Now, take your time. All right. That's very cute. Very nice. But I want to hear it. I want to hear it. You know, you start... You know, this is like a competition. Who can play more notes with less bow? You know, why? Why, you know... You know, I mean, do something. You know, use a little bit more bow. You know, because it's very small. You know? Wait for it. Yeah. No. What would happen if you just... I don't know. Let's experiment. What would happen if you don't do the ricochet? What would happen if you just do spiccato? I don't know. Something. That's pretty good. And it gives you more of a chance. You know, you could do a whole sweep. You know? If you're facing there, you go... A whole sweep of the thing. I love to teach. I think that teaching helps me a lot. The most important thing about playing concerts is to be able to listen while you're playing. Sometimes you listen while you're playing and you say to yourself, why... I say to myself, why is it not going quite well? And then all of a sudden I say to myself, listen to what you preach. You know? All day yesterday you were talking about certain thing in the bow. Do it yourself. You know, don't just say to somebody else. And I do it and it really helps me. That's number one. Number two, it's very nice to help people. Help young people. And I think that I do a good job. I think that the important thing about teaching besides knowing what you're talking about on the technical terms is to give support to the students. To really tell them, you know, to give compliments when compliments are needed and to be able to make criticisms in such a way that they will not be destructive. All right, try it from here. More, more, more. Now you go. You know. Don't rush, don't rush. It's time. Plenty of time. Okay. We'll start by you telling me how you do the staccato bit. Now is it, do you stiffen the arm? Is that what you do? Uh-huh. And then what do you do? Hope for the best. Hope for the best, yeah. No, you know, there's a story. I'll never forget this. Joseph Gingold told me once that he did a concerto and there was supposed to be a lot of staccato there. And he didn't have a good staccato. So Izay, Eugene Izay, was at the concert and Izay was a huge, tall fellow and quite frightened to a violinist who's starting or any colleague of his because he was such a giant. And he came backstage and he says, what's with the staccato? Where was the staccato? No staccato. So he says, well, I'm sorry, Mr. Izay, but I don't have a staccato. He says, I'll give you a staccato. Don't worry. He says, just put the violin under the chin. So he says, now put the bow on the string. Go! He got so nervous, he says, he hasn't lost it since. © BF-WATCH TV 2021