/ world today news/ Ognyan Stamboliev talks with the violinist Zefira Valova
– Dear maestro Valova, let’s start our conversation with the beginning – the first children’s contacts with great music. Then – elementary and high school education…
– I have been playing the violin since I was 5 years old, my mother insisted on enrolling me. I wanted to play the piano, but we didn’t have any… I developed my violin skills smoothly and without great ambitions. I just knew at some point that playing was what I wanted. I graduated from music school and Russian high school in parallel. I tried not to have a deficit in some areas at the expense of others. At the academy, I began to breathe fresh air with Prof. Yosif Radionov – a performer and pedagogue with open senses and fine taste, who revealed to me some secrets of the baroque repertoire. With Stoika Milanova, I emphasized an emblematic virtuoso violin repertoire by Russian authors.
– How and why did you turn to Baroque music? Why did you choose it over the other eras? Of course, you did not give up the classics and romance, but…
– I started listening to authors I didn’t know before. And I didn’t like performing Bach like the others. So I started looking for my own way.
– Explain for our readers the term “historically informed performance of the Baroque repertoire”? You studied baroque violin in Amsterdam….
– History influences culture (sometimes the reverse is possible – bearing in mind Frederick the Great and his penchant for playing the flute instead of fighting). By knowing the circumstances surrounding the creation of a cultural phenomenon, such as Vivaldi’s violin concertos, we understand the context of audience, conditions, instruments, instrumental technique, fashion.
– How and where did your active concert activity begin?
– I have always been active, but I learned to feel good on stage precisely with the old repertoire, which requires a calm and creative mind at the moment of performance. I try not to present a product, but to create it at the moment of execution. But the important steps in my performing work happened precisely in my homeland: with the Classic FM orchestra in my student years, when I was also the concertmaster of a number of concerts, with the early music ensembles Ars Baroque and Concerto Antico, which gave basic practical guidelines to my future work, with the Sofia Philharmonic we worked diligently for three consecutive seasons on ancient repertoire…
– Now you work as a member and concertmaster of the EU Baroque Orchestra /since 2008/, with the biggest world names. Surely this brings you great joy and responsibility?
– This forum was so important to me. I learned a lot and met big names in our field. I still remember the beginning with the difficulties of some “fresh” Europeans and future baroque musicians…Unfortunately, this orchestra no longer has subsidies from the EU and has ceased its activities since this year.
– You also work with a famous Italian orchestra “The Golden Apple”….
– My work with them is intense, very demanding and responsible. As a concertmaster, I am charged with the difficult task of understanding and assisting the conductors Maxim Emelyanichev, Francesco Corti at the moment and Georgiou Petru, Stefano Montanari, Ricarno Minazzi in the past, who always “conduct” from their instrument: harpsichord or violin. And when I myself lead, my presence has a different meaning, more creative, all-encompassing. I like both roles. We have a recording of the Mozart symphonies coming up, starting this season with Maxim Emelyanichev, and I’m looking forward to that, as well as my solo album of Italian concerts.
– Who are the main and favorite authors in your extensive repertoire?
– I perform Handel very often, I know his vocal prowess, I have also played a number of chamber works. And surprisingly, I like it more and more because of the wonderful colleagues with whom I perform it. I have played works from 4 centuries and in this variety I have not found any unloved authors. Perhaps some of the composers who followed the fashion of their time are less interesting…
– For 13 years now, you have been directing the first “Baroque Art” festival in our country. What made you come up with this idea, since we don’t have a great tradition of performing music from that era? What has been the most interesting part of the festival so far and will it continue?
– The thirteenth edition of the festival has ended, and with relief and satisfaction I direct my forces towards the coming year, when, after the high criteria set, my task will not be easy. My personal attraction to the 18th century repertoire was the reason we started the annual festival, which has expanded and differentiated itself from other cultural events in our country. Without claiming to be the most popular, the biggest or the most ambitious, it gathers on the Bulgarian stage our talents realized abroad, introduces the audience to the current stars of the early music scene, presents premiere performances (for Bulgaria and often for the world). The festival has become a tradition, and many young musicians have gone to the world’s great centers for the study of early music precisely inspired by the festival events over the years. (In our country there are no circumstances for local implementation, therefore there is no need for education in this area). And the audience, it’s magical! I adore the cordiality accompanied by a slight shyness, the spontaneity in the reactions, the exchange of energy and the pulsation of the hearts of the audience and performers in a single rhythm. It is an honor for me to be both a performer and an audience at the festival events.
– What instrument do you play?
– In my hands is a violin made in Florence in 1760 by two luthier brothers with the surname Carcasi. A Tyrolean influenced instrument, very well preserved and with a wonderful sound. It was provided to me by the Dutch Jumpstart Foundation.
– What are you dreaming about?
– My dreams are often musical and fortunately many of them come true.
– Now the musical life in our country is in crisis. Delegated budgets ruin orchestras and theaters, repertoire compromises are made. The number of young musicians is decreasing… What do you think should be done?
– In our country, in the cultural sphere, I do not find strong logic and explainable solutions. That is why the consequences are catastrophic. Art is unprofitable and inconvenient to those who have no contact with it, who do not know it and are not carried away by its power. It is very important to educate the youngest, to educate not consumers but creators, to create love for the beautiful. The seed planted in the young mind would bear fruit later. At the moment, the crisis is not only in the musical life – our spirit is poor.
– You recently returned from a big tour in Latin America? How did it go?
– Latin America filled me with great doubts about the future of our planet, about ecology, balance and peace, but also impressed me with the humanity of each individual. Our tour with Joyce Di Donato carried a message of peace, of finding peace in the chaotic and turbulent world around us through music, through creation, and each one of the audience, deeply moved by the spectacle we presented, found their own answer to the question of how to carried a fraction of perfection and balance, respect and genius into the concert hall and beyond. It was extremely hard that our concert in Santiago, Chile didn’t happen, we couldn’t even get there because of the riots. The next joint project of the brilliant mezzo-soprano Joyce Di Donato and the Il Pomo d’oro orchestra is a personal musical confession of the singer and our first concerts with the new program will be in May 2020…
#Zefira #Valova #ancient #repertoire #requires #calm #creative #mind..
