Gil Shaham

Gil Shaham

GIL SHAHAM GIVES UP THE GHOST

The Fearless Fiddler Scares Up a Macabre Musical Feast
Many violinists are like Jekyll and Hyde. Take Gil Shaham: It would be hard to find someone more sweet and soft-spoken. But put a fiddle in his hands, and he plays like a man possessed. Unlike some of his colleagues, Shaham seems just as content playing lighter fare (Fiddler of the Opera) as he does plumbing the depths of warhorses (including acclaimed concertos by Prokofiev, Barber, Sibelius, and Bartók). He won his first Grammy Award when he was still in his 20s, for American Scenes, his 1998 recital with André Previn. His brand-new Devil's Dance, a spine-tingling collection of haunted and haunting miniatures, features favorite finger-crunchers like Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre and equally eerie showpieces by Korngold, Bolcom, Ysaÿe, and others. Shaham spoke about the album's bewitching musical brew with Barnes & Noble.com's Andrew Farach-Colton.

Barnes & Noble.com: The violin has been associated with the devil for centuries. What makes the instrument seem so demonic?

Gil Shaham: I don't know, but it's true. Somehow we've come to play this weird role in society. Who'd have thought that all us mild-mannered, nerdy violinists would have this dark side! [laughs] Paganini, for example, had a technique that was so far beyond anybody else's that people figured he must have sold his soul to the devil. I was in France, in Nice, and I saw the house where Paganini died. The story goes that after his death, the townspeople wouldn't remove his body. They were convinced he was the son of Satan, so he lay there to rot for weeks.

B&N.com: What are the scariest pieces on the album for you, from a technical point of view?

GS: A lot of the pieces are very difficult. There's a lot of violin "macho" in them -- all these tricks that you have to be in shape for. Like the "Devil's Trill" Sonata: I always have to practice for a couple of months to build up the muscles in my hand before I can play the whole thing through. Bazzini's Ronde des lutins is also full of little tricks -- it's like three minutes of hurdles, one after the other.

B&N.com: What's the most frightening thing that's happened to you onstage?

GS: I was playing a Prokofiev Concerto in...well, maybe I shouldn't say where it was. Towards the second page, the concertmaster of the orchestra pointed his bow at my shoe, and I looked down and there was a huge water bug crawling on me. Have you seen these things? Ugh!

B&N.com: So what did you do?

GS: I kicked it off, and it landed in the orchestra, then the players kicked it back and forth. That poor bug, I think it finally ended up somewhere back in the viola section.

B&N.com: Your record opens with two unusual selections: John Williams's "Devil's Dance," adapted from the score to The Witches of Eastwick, and "A Transylvanian Lullaby" from John Morris's music for Young Frankenstein. How did you find these pieces?

GS: The Witches of Eastwick was in some way how I started thinking about this album; it's how I got in touch with my satanic side. There's this scene in it where Jack Nicholson, playing the devil, comes with his violin to seduce Susan Sarandon, who's a cellist. I thought this was so funny. I mean, there definitely is something about the evil role the violinist has come to play in our imagination! I talked about this with John Williams. And both Jonathan [Feldman, the pianist] and I were so thrilled and honored that he made this short encore piece for us from the film's score. The music for Young Frankenstein, on the other hand, is the perfect spoof of those old gothic horror movie scores. So, of course, it has a violin solo.

B&N.com: The record encompasses quite a wide range of repertory, including some pieces violinists rarely, if ever, play.

GS: We wanted to include some very classic pieces like the Saint-Saëns, Bazzini, and Tartini, but we also wanted to put some things that were new for us and that might be exciting for people to hear for the first time, too. We went through stacks of music and it took quite a while to narrow the program down. At the end of these sessions, when we counted up the final tracks, we found we had 13.

B&N.com: I assumed that was done on purpose.

GS: Actually, it wasn't. Creepy, huh?

October 6, 2000