With Spit And Polish, Nigel Has The Moves

The Age

Thursday February 28, 2008

Michael Shmith

The violin virtuoso is learning to love Mozart. He explains how to Michael Shmith

IT IS hard to believe that Nigel Kennedy, violinist extraordinaire, is 51. Just like his Guarneri, his patina is glowing and his sound forever young.

Here he is, in afternoon rehearsal with the Melbourne Symphony in the otherwise empty Hamer Hall, taking the orchestra through the first movement of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4. Kennedy, who is wearing a long grey T-shirt, khaki shorts, one orange sock and one green sock, and silver sneakers, is prowling around the players, occasionally stamping a foot to emphasise a beat, and trading remarks: a bit faster here, slow it down there and, at one stage, the command, "None of that Andre Rieu shit!"

The last time we met, in 1990, Nigel Kennedy had been freshly reinvented as a punk version of his former self. His recording of The Four Seasons, by the composer he called "Viv", was a chartbuster. During that interview, Kennedy dropped the old "c" and "f" words like semiquavers, never took off his sunglasses and tried to eat his violin.

Much has happened in the intervening 18 years. In 1992, saying he was tired of playing "dead guys' stuff", he retired from public performance, but continued to make recordings. Five years later, he was back, but dropped the "Nigel", calling himself just "Kennedy" (he has since restored his first name). He became a father in 1997 and, in 2002, was appointed the artistic director of the Polish Chamber Orchestra. Now he divides his time between the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire (home of his beloved Elgar), and his adoptive city of Cracow in Poland; he spends two-thirds of his professional life playing jazz, and whatever is left over supporting his twin soccer teams, Aston Villa and Cracovia ("Yeah, man! C'mon you lions!").

Kennedy still greets one with a clenched-fist-to-clenched-fist handshake. Never mind: when those fingers uncurl and those hands pick up his violin, it takes only a stroke of the bow to remind you of his musical supremacy.

Two years ago, Kennedy directed and played Vivaldi with the MSO. He loves the orchestra, and the rapport is obvious. "It's great to have an orchestra that's playing so beautifully with such warmth of sound and such quickness, such awareness, of rhythmic factors. You've got everything there," he says.

We're sitting in row J of the stalls. Kennedy is drinking a mug of tea from a thermos. In the background a solo double bass is mournfully tuning. It has taken Kennedy years to come around to performing Mozart, a composer whose violin concertos he previously dismissed as "coffee-table".

His change of heart appears to have happened for two reasons. The first was purely musical. "I got into Mozart after playing so much Vivaldi and Bach, which was the ideal preparation for getting the relationship with an orchestra without a conductor," he says. "Once you've got the tools for that, it's easier to enjoy playing Mozart, and the style of it. Getting the confidence, then finding something which is more a personal relationship, opposed to the protocol of how it should be played." To him, music always has to mean something. "There's no way, not in my life, you can do otherwise," he says.

The second reason was more personal, more charming. His son's full name is Sark Yves Amadeus Kennedy. "I called him that because I knew I was going to love my son for the rest of my life. But I had this aversion to Mozart's violin music and I thought, well, if I call him Amadeus I'm going to have to learn to love Mozart as well. I think it kind of worked. And he's proud of his name because no one else is called that at school."

Sark is 11. "He's cool, man. Only had a very short visit to Australia this time because he's not doing well enough at school." Neither did his dad. "But I did have this other outlet, which I don't want to foist on him."

So does Sark want to be a musician? "He wants to be a drummer, so the answer's half yes and half no." Cackle, cackle.

Oddly, for someone who is so up to date with mannerisms, Kennedy has a quaint fondness for old-fashioned musicianship and its past heroes.

"Yeah. I'm not really an appreciator of fashion - whether it's clothing or art movements," he says. "Now in England it's got to be multimedia or it won't get a grant. I hate all that stuff. Good music lasts for a long time and new music excites people. It's not just posing around with fashion. Those old masters had a live sound coming from those 78(rpm) recordings - there was something more immediate, and people weren't expected to be the same: Szigeti, Kreisler, Heifetz, Thibaud, Menuhin . . . all vastly different people. I'm not hankering after the past; all I'm trying to do is inject a life which was there and may have been lost a little bit."

The modern musical world is a little too fast for his taste.

"My recording career is almost the opposite of what my record company (EMI) wants," he says.

"I want to perform the work before recording it to make it an album worth having. If you go and record something with no experience of how it works with your colleagues or the audience, then what are you trying to encapsulate on this bit of plastic or MP3? What is it for? My old-fashioned view is that a recording of a work is meant to be a recording of something that has already been invented and is worth capturing."

Kennedy's duality as classical and jazz performer - composer, too - has led to an extraordinary array of recordings, which range from jazz and klezmer arrangements to his recent album of two violin concertos by neglected early 20th-century Polish composers, Emil Mlynarski and Mieczyslaw Karlowicz. Their names, alas, did not make it on to the cover, which instead bears the more attractive title, Polish Spirit. "It's a bit of a play on words, because Poland is a famous drinking nation," Kennedy says. "I believe the claim they invented vodka - maybe as a secret weapon to kill the Russians. "

It's time to rehearse the Beethoven Concerto.

"I can't wait to work at it with these cats," says Kennedy, heading to the platform to unpack his Guarneri from the case it snugly shares with a gleaming metallic and plastic electric violin. "We did a bit yesterday, and they got to grasp my concept in no time."

Nigel Kennedy and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform at Hamer Hall tonight, tomorrow and Saturday. Limited tickets still available.

LINK

? mso.com.au

© 2008 The Age

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