Cho-Liang Lin

"Now Batting For New York..."

Cho-Liang Lin

Spend an hour with Jimmy Lin and you get the feeling that if he had the choice of playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall or taking batting practice at Yankee Stadium, he'd trade his catgut for a batting glove in a New York minute. "My heart stopped when Bucky Dent hit that home run in Fenway Park on October 8th, 1978!", he recalls with glee. Cho-Liang Lin was born in Taiwan and moved to Australia by himself at age 12 to pursue the violin. Having studied with Robert Pikler in Sydney and Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard he made his debut in the Saint-Saëns Third Concerto with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He was heartbroken when Miss DeLay turned down a chance for him to play the Tchaikovsky concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic the same year -- "Think of the bragging rights at Juilliard" -- but understands the wisdom of the advice; now he teaches at Juilliard himself. He premiered and recorded Tan Dun's Violin Concerto, Out of Peking Opera, with the Helsinki Philharmonic, and his recordings have earned a Grammy Nomination and "Record of the Year" from both Gramophone and Stereo Review. In demand as a soloist around the world, Mr. Lin has been an Artist Member of the Chamber Music Society since 1995. He and his wife Debbie, a pediatrician, reside on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

"My very good childhood friend, Bai, was a big-brother figure. We played baseball together, we were very good buddies. And one day he started to learn the violin. I kept on watching him practice. I wanted to emulate everything he was doing including mimicking his violin playing motions. After many weeks of doing this my parents bought me a toy violin; I quickly wore that out, and when I was five my father brought home a quarter-size violin. He said, 'If you really like it so much, stop bothering Bai and go and take lessons yourself'. I sounded like hell but I was having a good time. Bai is a computer engineer in the Bay Area now. He gave up violin a long time ago, but he was my inspiration -- and he seems to be very pleased about that!

"Taiwan was no longer the best place for me to study music and Australia presented the most viable alternative; New York was just too big and forbidding for me to consider at that age. Coming from a little town, it was bewildering for me to go into an entirely alien culture. I was speaking English for the first time, flying on my own and traveling alone. It was both exciting and scary. I was going to a very good place where I had relatives who could look after me, but I knew I was going to miss my mom -- by then widowed -- my friends and my environment. I walked into a huge unknown quantity. The three years in Australia turned out great; I was able to grow up and experience wonderful friendships and I had a fabulous teacher, Robert Pikler. It prepared me very well for the jump to New York.

"My father would bring home six recordings of the Mendelssohn Concerto."

"In the early days the music of Mozart appealed to me beyond anything else. I somehow understood his logic intuitively, I knew how his phrases would go; his elegant style was very clear to me. I still love it today, maybe more than anything else. I loved the Mendelssohn Concerto and always wanted to play it well; it took years for me to sound good on it. Although a physicist by profession, my father was really a closet music fanatic. He would bring home six recordings of the Mendelssohn Concerto and have me listen to them -- 'This is Milstein, this is Francescatti, this is Stern, this is Oistrakh...' -- and a few days later he would quiz me. 'Well, what about Milsteins version do you like? How is Oistrakh different from Heifetz? Why is Stern's performance different?' I was so good at articulating my thoughts on why player x was different from player y that my parents thought I should become a music critic one day. I remember everything about those recordings. Oistrakh's version was very luxurious, very warm and loving and very slow. Milstein was impeccably elegant, slightly distant but beautifully articulated. Heifetz was incredibly fleet and very agitated. I always thought Stern was a most marvelous synthesis of the different styles. He had passion, elegance and structural integrity. Stern's style is never extreme; Heifetz was incredibly brilliant, breathlessly fast and shattering in its impact on you. Stern never did that, he was much more middle of the road -- not boring, but a carefully considered combination of all the other virtues. His recording of Prokofiev's First Concerto used to move me to tears. When I make my own recording of a standard concerto, deep down in my memory I'm still a seven year old kid in Taiwan listening to an Isaac Stern Tchaikovsky Concerto, and if I were to make a Tchaikovsky recording that's the standard I'd have to live up to. Those early impressions are not that different from my opinions after this long journey I've had on the violin.

"Robert Pikler gave me a very strong belief that musical integrity is of the utmost priority; you must not sell out for cheap effects. Everything has to come from the heart. His favorite phrase was, 'Make this a special moment for this audience'. I learned from him the importance of studying a wide range of music to know more about each composer. He said, 'The violin repertoire is ultimately very narrow and Beethoven's one violin concerto is only a fraction of him. Don't confine yourself to the violin repertoire; let's go and study the string quartets'. Miss DeLay's fascination with tonal qualities is also something I try to impart to my students. What's the point of playing the violin if you can't make a nice sound?

"I'm a big fan of Carl Nielsen's music. Somehow he continues to be neglected."

"My violin is a Joseph Guarneri del Gesù made in 1734; it was owned by the Duke of Camposelice, who lived in Paris in the 1880s and married into the Singer Sewing family. It's a beautiful violin. I had just acquired a Strad but I always loved the Guarneri's sound. Kyung Wha Chung had already laid claim to the violin. I told the dealer that if she didn't buy it I'd like a go at it, and when she dropped out of consideration I sold the Strad and acquired this violin. It's got a really nice centered quality about it and it can do just about anything. You can push it really hard, drive the sound and make it really powerful, or you can caress it and let it sing very softly, hovering above. It's versatile and not temperamental; violins go crazy when you change humidity levels rapidly and some of them fall apart for a month. This violin is a very healthy instrument; when it encounters different environments it reacts very well, and for a traveling violinist that's a great luxury.

"I'm a big fan of Carl Nielsen's music. I find a lot of his symphonic works, the sonatas for Violin and Piano and the Violin Concerto very beautiful. I think his Fifth Symphony is right up there along with Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, Prokofiev's Fifth and Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements as one of the great symphonic works of the 20th Century -- it's shatteringly beautiful. Somehow Nielsen continues to be neglected.

"A defining moment for me was when I made my New York debut at age 19 playing Mozart's Third Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall -- back to Mozart again; how interesting. I just knew I was on and fear was no longer a factor; anxiety was not there, I had the total attention of conductor David Zinman and I knew I had the audience in my palm. I don't think I walked away thinking, Jeez, you got it made; I just thought, You know, it's a really nice feeling to know this was your big chance in New York and you came through it. The fact that it affected my career very positively was entirely a bonus -- but that night I knew as a musician I could go up on stage under enormous pressure and deliver the goods. That was a great confidence booster and really made a huge difference in how I approached all subsequent concerts.

"I cried when I read about Mozart's last days. He said he wasn't ready to die."

"In his First Violin Concerto Shostakovich takes you through a journey of bliss and hell and ends up in ironic triumph -- triumph and mockery. It's a very moving concerto and the passacaglia is by far the most emotional segment. It's up to the performer to convey a sense of helplessness, of crying out -- but without self-pity. You don't make a huge statement -- See how emotional I can be; you let the music speak for itself. When you go out on stage and play something that intensely emotional you bare your soul to the audience; it's like declaring your love for a girl and not being afraid of getting rejected. When you play the Shostakovich you put every ounce of your soul into every note.

"My favorite tennis player is Stefan Edberg. I think of his style as impeccably elegant, very swift, not overpowering -- not a big basher who blows you off the court -- but he wins with intelligence and style, he's a good sportsman and he's immaculately attired. He's a real gentleman. That's the way I tend to think of myself as a violinist; style and presentation of it is very important for me.

"The Chamber Music Society is an opportunity for me to take two to three weeks off in the winter to play chamber music with some of my favorite colleagues. The most difficult question for any musician is how to work together with other musicians so the concert is a fulfilling conclusion to the rehearsals. At the Society you have to work so hard in those days of preparation. It's no longer like 50 years ago when they played chamber music strictly as a leisure activity at people's houses, you sight read, made lots of mistakes and didn't care. Not anymore; you're scrutinized and you better come up with the goods. I love the challenge to match the ideas of five, eight, whatever number of musicians and make it cohesive; I like rising to the occasion. If someone says, 'Here's a brand new violin concerto and you have to present the world premiere in two weeks,' I'll do it!"

Ideal person to have dinner with tonight:

"Without a doubt, Mozart. I would bring my wife with me to treat him. Those early illnesses he acquired from traveling in cold and horrible conditions hastened his death, and if somebody could have made him live a little longer it would have been the greatest contribution to history. Poor kid, I can't believe he even had any energy to write considering that he was hit with one serious illness after another. I cried when I read about his last days. He said he wasn't ready to die; he was frantically trying to set his family up so they would be well off in his absence, he was desperately trying to finish his Requiem and he was finally receiving a handsome salary as Royal Court Kapellmeister -- but he could never fulfill his duties. H.C. Robbins Landon said that December 5th, 1791 was the most tragic day in music history because Mozart died on that day, and I completely agree. The other person I'd have dinner with tonight if I could is Hitler. I'd poison him."