Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner

This extraordinary videoclip blew in from a thoughtful friend with the Dallas Symphony, accompanied by various peripheral speculations about this demon violinist who – seemingly on the spur of the moment – improvises the damnedest cadenza imaginable for one of the pillars of the strictly Classical repertoire, Mozart’s third Violin Concerto, in G. I needed only a second or two to recognize Gilles Apap, a truly unique violin virtuoso I heard (and met) a little over two years ago when our mutual Russian-Polish conductor friend Andrey Boreyko, an all-out fan of his, brought us together at lunch before their improbably unorthodox concert together with the orchestra of Berlin’s Komische Oper. Take a look at it – with your volume up to the maximum – then you can read what I wrote (for www.MusicalAmerica.com) about that concert.

A Rip-Roarin’ Time in a Berlin Opera House
By Paul Moor
MusicalAmerica.com
March 28, 2005

BERLIN – We have three major newspapers here, plus a Berlin edition of Die Welt, a national daily, and as far as I can ascertain not one of them reviewed a concert on March 18 that gave me more pleasure than the vast majority of musical fare available in this traditionally music-mad metropolis. In addition to five other full-fledged symphony orchestras, all our three full-time opera houses (each with a ten-month season) has a pit orchestra of symphonic proportions and standards, and each of those has its own annual concert series. On the memorable night in question, the orchestra of the Komische Oper (founded 1947 literally in a ruin, two short years after World War II almost obliterated Berlin) played the fifth concert in its current series which carries the Anglophone motto “Folk Songs”; it brought together Andrey Boreyko, the Russian-Polish conductor, and Gilles Apap, the Algerian-born, California-based French violinist whose surname bespeaks at least one Maltese ancestor. My heart goes out to my German colleagues here who had to miss this unforgettable event.

Boreyko, born and educated in St. Petersburg to a Russian mother and a Polish father, has at 47 enjoyed an impressive career with an imposing list of the world’s finest orchestras, and bids fair to rise all the way to the top international echelon. Gilles Apap requires a bit more introduction here, for surely concert music throughout the world can boast no spirit so exuberantly free as this extraordinary, probably unique violinist, who breaks almost all rules except the one applying to musical quality, and not only violates almost all concert conventions but has you loving it.

Although together they compose a study in contrasts, they obviously glory in making music together, for this marks the ninth time they can offhand recall such a joint appearance as this one. Boreyko has recently settled in as conductor of the Hamburg Symphony, and a review of their concert there last year in the venerable old Musikhalle proclaims “The Musikhalle as Madhouse: Symphoniker Celebrate Triumph” – with “madhouse” in this instance definitely intended in a positive sense. That review begins with “Actually only children and musicians can play, normal adults must look on. The Hamburger Symphoniker on Sunday de-enforced those strict game rules, and turned the audience into enthusiastic fellow players, who clapped, cheered, and stomped” – quite a welcome especially for Boreyko’s introductory concert with his fortunate new band.

Webster’s Unabridged defines the Greek word “charisma” (and its lesser known but equally valid Anglophone variants “charism” and “charismata”) as “a gift, from [the verb] charizesthai: to favor, gratify,” which in Christian theology traditionally means “a divinely inspired gift, grace, or talent” – and that neatly wraps up Gilles Apap, at least in the purely musical sense.

Any way you slice it, he absolutely radiates charisma – spontaneously, effortlessly. He first grabbed my attention several years ago in a television documentary about the late Yehudi Menuhin’s school in Switzerland for young violinists; Apap appeared in that film only briefly, but he immediately commanded the viewer’s attention. (He never studied with Menuhin, but Menuhin did proudly hail him as a colleague.) Another documentary (available as a French-made muiltilingual DVD entitled “Apap Masala”) made me even more curious about him, for it showed him clearly having the time of his life sitting in with a foot-pattin’ amateur group of California fans of blue-grass music, but with one riveting difference: when Apap swung into what such folk minstrels call an old-time fiddler’s breakdown, he did to his fiddle – and I do not exaggerate – something reminiscent of what Jascha Heifetz used to do to his. All this left me virtually on fire to catch him here in person, especially in tandem with Boreyko, about whom I’ve waxed enthusiastic in this space on more than one previous occasion.

Advance billing mentioned the orchestral suite from Zoltán Kodály’s opera “Háry János,” both of Béla Bartók’s Rhapsodies for violin and orchestra, and the Second Symphony of Jean Sibelius – but the actual event surprised us with a mind-boggling difference: Boreyko had had the frisky idea (implicitly okayed by a note in the printed Bartók score) of separating the various components of the Bartók and interspersing them in performance with approximately similar segments of that delicious Kodály music. (The participation of the second billed soloist, Luigi Gaggero, an Italian who went to Budapest to become a master of that most Hungarian of instruments, the cimbalom, and now holds a Strasbourg professorship for that lovely instrument, made it even more authentic and delicious.)

I cannot immediately recall any other concert where I’ve sat through an entire half with an uninterrupted smile of sheer pleasure on my face. A few case-hardened graybeards in this noticeably youthful orchestra (hats off especially to its solo violist, a young woman with a big, rich, sumptuous tone) seemed to have a bit of calcified difficulty cracking a smile, but the audience indicated a totally unleashed central European desire to tear the house down.

Unlike his more conventionally garbed colleagues, Apap – with not the slightest trace of narcissism or star allure – unobtrusively strolled in from a floor-level side door, shirt-tail outside his casual slacks, fiddle in hand, and at the proper point he joined in, as easily and naturally as he might a blue-grass session at a California highwayside diner, eventually making his exits just as unobtrusively. Between two segments, Boreyko ended the momentary hiatus by audibly humming Kodály’s next theme, which Apap picked up on his fiddle and carried it over to that wonderful violist, who then continued in faithful adherence to the printed score.

After the intermission came the Sibelius, and Boreyko gave it the sort of totally dedicated, heart-and-soul reading one used to hear from Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic. Keep your eye on Boreyko; he already has behind him outstanding successes with such top-flight orchestras as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Berlin’s Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, Leipzig’s Gewandhausorchester, London’s Philharmonia, and Munich’s Philharmonic, and his personal future sky seems to have no limit.

You’ll find Gilles Apap’s website www.gillesapap.com quite a trip, worth poking into its every nook and cranny. Apap never studied with Menuhin, but he attributes this (slightly ungrammatical) encomium to a letter Menuhin wrote him: “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.”

Repeatedly during the evening there popped into my head the title of a Leonard Bernstein book: “The Joy of Music.” I feel only compassion for my German press colleagues who missed this unforgettable evening. As you may have gathered, I myself had the time of my life.