Soul sister
INTERVIEW As Lisa Batiashvili opens the BBC Proms season tonight with Sibelius, she explains how musicians need to cultivate a rich inner life and why we shouldn’t overpraise talented young players
I’ve had the great privilege of interviewing some fantastic players and conductors for this year’s BBC Proms programmes. These included one of my very favourite violinists, Lisa Batiashvili. Her playing is intense and thoughtful, while also expressive and unpretentious. As we spoke, it became apparent why, as she explained the importance of musicians developing a rich inner life and sense of curiosity. She also shared her concerns about being too positive with young players, but rather helping them to understand the ups and downs of a life in music. She gave me so many great answers that I didn’t have space for in my text, so here are some of the ‘spare’ ones!
What makes Sibelius special for you as a composer?
‘He is so authentic – so much himself. You would always recognise his music. There is a kind of simplicity and innocence in all his works, but on the other hand, incredible power and pain. He digs deep into human emotions and combines that with all these colours. And, just like Elgar, he was very close to his country. Sibelius was all about his own surroundings and his pride in where he came from.’
What can you tell about his own violin playing from this concerto?
‘He wrote this concerto and then revised it. The original version was much longer and more complex, and even more difficult, technically. He worked hard on this piece, to make it as perfect as possible. He was a good violinist himself, but I think also a bit frustrated as a violinist, so he wanted to put every possible technical difficulty into this concerto, to make the player work hard. It’s still one of the most technically challenging concertos today.’
How do you feel just before you go on stage?
‘I’ve been in this business for quite a long time, but I still get nervous. Sometimes when I tour and play every day, I get less nervous, but usually – especially when I take long breaks for personal reasons – going back on stage is super-exciting but also unpredictable. The unpredictability is scary, but also fantastic, because it makes a musician’s life exciting. Everything depends on how you are able to project your musical interpretation on that particular day, in that particular hall, with that audience and orchestra. It all comes together, and you never know!
How much control do you have over your performance in that case?
‘You should be able to control it – more or less – through your preparation and experience, and the way you handle the stress. There are so many things that the audience doesn’t even notice, but we know that things can go in different ways. There is a special magic that either happens in a concert or doesn’t. It can be a very good performance without the magic, or it can be a performance with some imperfections, that still projects very strongly. Being a performer is one of the most complex things, and depends on so many aspects of the life of the artist; their attitude; the richness of their soul; what they carry inside that they can give; but also, of course, the technical and professional side. It is extremely disciplined, hard work, but there are many other things that happen in our heads and our lives to make us good performers.’
How do you look after that soul?
‘Soul is 80 per cent what we’re born with, and 20 per cent what we cultivate ourselves through our self-education, our curiosity and our ways of feeding our soul with information. In my case, I would also include contact and communication with other people and artists. For me, the biggest lessons have been in having the opportunity to work and talk with phenomenal artists like András Schiff, Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann – people I’ve not only worked with, but also been able to sit down with and talk to, to understand their wisdom. That is part of becoming an artist. It’s dangerous when an artist thinks they have the capacity to grow on their own. There are some people who isolate themselves in their world. They study and learn from themselves, of course, but if you don’t get in touch with other artists who have so much to share it becomes quite lonely and one sided.’
Is this something you always understood, even at conservatoire?
‘I had no idea, because there are things you learn with time and your own experience. For example, I realised at some point that when you’re experiencing a musical or artistic crisis – and we all have them and they can happen every five years or every second year – whenever you feel like something is not going the way you want, those moments of crisis are often a possibility to take a step forward. You don’t always know that at the time. You can start panicking and thinking, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ For a woman, especially, when you have children, you are going through an intense personal life and you’re not only committed to this one thing, you have to accept that the body and mind have waves. They come up and down. It’s so important to understand that, luckily, the life of a musician is long, and we will always have moments where we feel different. And then we take another turn and make new experiences that give us the opportunity to teach ourselves better.’
So did you ever think you might give up?
‘When I was 14, before I’d even started my heavy concert life! One has so much respect for the arts and it’s so refined and fragile somehow, that it is very hard to be self-confident. It is something that is bigger than us. All these master works – Mozart concertos, Brahms, Beethoven, everything else – there have been hundreds of wonderful performances. When you are a young artist, you have to deal with that. On one hand you have to understand this music and on the other, to have your own thing to say, without becoming an artificial kind of musician who says, ‘Okay, I’m going to do this to be different from everybody else.’ You have to do in such a way that you have your own voice. How does every talented artist do that? It’s almost a Utopian thought, because we keep repeating the same repertoire, and we are all aware of that, which is why it’s difficult. It’s a very big mission.’
What are the challenges for young musicians trying to make a career?
‘It’s even more difficult now because of the internet, and because the general level is so much higher. There are so many very good musicians, and not everybody can be a soloist or have the career of a star. There are some fantastic instrumentalists who have a hard time finding concerts. I started the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation to support young talented personalities in the right way. When a young musician is brilliant and receiving so much praise from the audience, it can be very harmful to overpraise them right away. It’s the worst thing you can do to an artist who already knows they are very good. You have to give this young artist the space to develop as a person and personality – and as a human being – before putting so much pressure on them by overpraising. It is important to support and motivate, but also not to overcharge them with too much success and positivity, because they will have to go through difficulties at some point.’
In previous generations, teachers were very critical of their students. Do you think that has changed?
‘It used to be much harder – it used to be very tough. It’s like raising children. You have to be human and to respect young people. I understand that very well, but at some point there also has to be a priority on honesty and an understanding that nothing is easy. Young people these days don’t understand how hard it is and how much hard work is behind every achievement, because we try to polish everything a little too much. But in the end, the most talented and intelligent ones will always make it.’
Lisa Batiashvili performs the Sibelius Violin Concerto with BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo tonight, 18 July, opening the BBC Proms season.
Fascinating insights. Really enjoyed reading this