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A giant of classical music, violinist Joshua Bell embraces everything from celebrity collaborations to working with disadvantaged youth in New York schools. By Kate Holden.
Violinist Joshua Bell still cherishes the unifying power of music
Joshua Bell is, in his 50s, very much as he was as a teen prodigy: courteous, grounded, thoughtful and amazing. His freshly washed hair and boy-band Midwestern looks have remained, along with a wide-eyed gratitude and enthusiasm for classical music and his beloved violin.
He has come far since his soloist debut at 14 with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra: perhaps as far as a classical performer can go. He is one of the most famous violinists in the world. The successor as musical director to Sir Neville Marriner at the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, he’s a nominee and winner of many awards, including Grammys, Oscars and Brit Awards. He’s made more than 40 recordings, playing a Stradivarius instrument created during the luthier’s best period.
Bell bought a Porsche at 19. He’s appeared on Sesame Street to jam with Telly Monster and played at the White House to several presidents – not Trump: “He didn’t tend to host classical music at the White House during his stint for some reason.” Bell runs workshops in disadvantaged schools in inner-city New York, was a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London and is now an adjunct associate professor at MIT. He accompanied Scarlett Johansson on an Oscar-nominated track for a documentary and has performed at most of the world’s leading venues and with the most celebrated conductors.
He hit viral fame in 2007 as the celebrity violinist with the $4 million violin who busked anonymously in a Washington, DC, metro station, earning only a few dollars and recognised by only one passer-by. The experiment was later written up in a Pulitzer Prize-winning article. He’s one of those gifted multipotentialites who manage a fierce devotion to one talent, while cheerfully maintaining other whole disciplines as hobbies. He can make the rest of us feel slack.
But he’s a relaxed and relatable star, familiar with publicity but still liable to hesitate over an answer, apologise for going on a tangent. “I’m incredibly lucky,” he says from his home in New York City. “I count myself grateful every day for having a profession that is something I feel passionate about, and something that I love so much.”
Bell credits his parents, who found him stringing rubber bands across a chest of drawers at the age of four and got him a violin; his fortune in growing up in a musical and music-loving family and the happy chance that Indiana University – where his psychologist father had taken up a position – was home to the largest music school in the United States; and Josef Gingold, one of the world’s best violin teachers.
At 12, the prodigy Bell caught Gingold’s eye in a performance. Two years later, having progressed rapidly under the inspiration and tenderness of his teacher, he had his solo debut. Gingold, a Russian Jew like Bell’s grandmother, played under Toscanini and studied with Ysaÿe. He taught a style that evoked the sweet rubato tones of the 19th century.
Bell is known for his wholehearted adoration of the French romantic canon, including works by Wieniawski and Paganini, which some might think the soft-pop end of classical repertoire. “My teacher really admired these,” he says, “and taught me to approach all music as great music, and never to look down upon music as being cheap or whatever, cheaper than another piece of music.” He named his first son after his mentor.
A shy kid with a shiny brown bowl cut, Bell always felt assured with a violin in his hands. He could express his teen angst by incarnating anguished, explosive and heart-felt music made, as he says, by some of the best creative minds in history. “I think people who don’t know classical music may have some connotation of classical music of the thing where the wife drags the husband to the opera, in the sitcoms. You know: he’d rather be watching the football game. That’s their idea of what classical music is.” But, he says, “they don’t really understand that they’re dissing basically the entire history of music.”
Classical music is so vast and enjoyable, so pervasive, tried and true. Anyone who goes to a film enjoys classical music without realising it. “Star Wars would not be anything without [John Williams’s] soundtrack,” he says. Bell has, it turns out, recorded an album of Gershwin covers with Williams. He has featured on several acclaimed soundtracks, including Hans Zimmer’s Angels and Demons, and was the sound of the eponymous instrument on The Red Violin, which chuffed him. The film’s score won an Oscar. Then he returned to playing Shostakovich.
At 15, Bell was obsessed with video games and had Mozart’s Requiem set for his alarm – “looking back now it seems a little morbid to wake up to” – and was already a lauded international performer. Four decades later, he is not in the least wearied by his devotion. It’s a rare and magical thing, to do what you love and not have it spoiled by claustrophobia. “My family and I really believe [music] should be for everyone,” he says. “Not that everyone has to take it extremely seriously, but I believe that giving an instrument to a child is just the greatest gift you can give them.”
He is a loud advocate for sharing the joy. “It affects the brain in so many ways, it’s so appealing,” he says. “It appealed to me as a kid in artistic ways, also mathematical ways. I loved puzzles, I was really into science, puzzles and math, and music has that as well. Music really has everything. There’s a reason why every civilisation since the beginning of humanity has had music. I don’t really understand why music has such an impact on us, but it’s certainly necessary and important for humanity.”
Bell is one of those cosmopolitan artists whose thoughts after his long, deep dive into the significance of music and the classical industry – a word he hates – are worth listening to. He tours about 250 days a year, as well as recording, rehearsing, directing the Academy of St Martin and, since this year, the New Jersey Symphony – with all the fundraising, publicity and administrative work that goes with that level of celebrity. It’s fair to say he has done the rounds. Not feeling worn out?
“That’s really the fun part about being a classical musician,” he says. “You’re wearing so many hats, and one moment you’re playing Bach and the next moment you’re playing Tchaikovsky, or something modern – Piazzolla, for example. If you’re classically trained, you can do a lot of things. I’ve gone on tours with bluegrass musicians, and I’ve recorded with Chick Corea and other jazz musicians – I’m not a jazz violinist, but it allows me to delve into various things.” He’s always looking for ways to get classical music out there.
He adores gaming and musical technology, but feels very connected to people who lived hundreds of years ago. “I mean, Mozart and Bach – when you’re a classical musician you feel you know them, in a way you probably know them better than from anything you’d ever read about them, or even if you met them, because you meet them from their music, which is the deepest part of their soul.”
He’s also endlessly connecting with artists of other disciplines, playing with Sting and Branford Marsalis, Anoushka Shankar and Regina Spektor. There are many benefits to being a classical virtuoso: Bell manages to be both casual and thrilled about his contacts list.
“I get to do a lot of fun things with people outside of the music world. Two weeks ago I was in the home of Ian McKellen in London doing a fundraiser for my orchestra, and I’ve got to do film work with Meryl Streep and people like that. I’m name-dropping now,” he says sheepishly, “but I love the fact that I get through music to meet people in other fields.
“The great physicist Brian Greene, who basically invented string theory – he has a world science festival and he asked me to collaborate with him, playing Bach while he read about the cosmos. I seek out those things. I have so many interests outside of music, so I find ways to connect with people I admire in other fields. Another one: I’m a huge foodie, so I’ve done events in my home with a lot of great famous chefs and we do food and music and wine and pairings. It’s a lot of fun.”
Fun is a strong motif with him. If you can’t enjoy things at his rank, then when? But one has the feeling that Bell has rarely been too po-faced. He will begin a legato, elegiac yet strangely familiar piece, and soon be sketching in the theme of “Yankee Doodle” to giggles from the audience. He and his second wife, the celebrated soprano Larisa Martínez, often host fundraisers and private musical evenings at their New York apartment.
We chat about the film Amadeus and Mozart’s Requiem. “Actually,” he says, “F. Murray Abraham, who played Salieri, was in my house recently at one of my soirees, and he was reading from the soliloquy [in Peter Shaffer’s script] where Salieri painfully admits the genius of Mozart in the film. He re-created that scene in my house for a fundraiser inside my apartment, so that was kind of cool...” He has released At Home with Friends, an album of collaborations in various genres, as a memento of such occasions. Well, you would, wouldn’t you, if you could?
Bell has faith, at this tense moment in American social and political history, in the power of music. He assumes that any American audience will have both Republicans and Democrats. “What’s so wonderful is that everyone is sitting there together,” he says. “Music appeals to our fundamental humanity, which goes way deeper than politics: it reminds us that we’re all human.”
Beauty is what comes to mind first when he contemplates his repertoire: he cherishes beauty. Even in painful times “we look to music and art for some sort of structure”. He speaks of Shostakovich, who wrote during Stalin’s regime, and recalls the immense beauty of art made even in despair.
In December, as America reckons with its election results, he’ll be back in Australia for a third tour, after satisfying audiences last year with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. It’s a series of intimate performances of Mozart, Fauré, Schubert and others with pianist Peter Dugan.
Bell is looking forward to the simplicity of the performances, although he never tires of a big event: its triumph and declaration of art’s force. “When I get onstage with an orchestra of 80 people, I just think of all the hard work that all those 80 people have put in, studying since they were very young children … The music itself is often coming from a handful of the greatest minds that ever walked the earth, the Bachs and the Beethovens,” he says.
“And then, I’m playing on a violin made by Stradivari from 1713, which is one of the greatest creations by a human being, and everyone is playing in harmony – it’s just an awesome experience. And I’m overwhelmed by how amazing it is and how privileged – it sounds a little corny, but – how privileged I am to be part of that shared experience. I’m very grateful.” We are, too.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 2, 2024 as "Ode to joy".
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