Peta Stewart
Like good wine, friendships just get better and French violinist Philippe Graffin is one example. He is here to play Brahms in the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s winter season, on June 15, on this, his 11th tour of the country. He is renewing a collaboration with principal guest conductor Bernhard Gueller, who has accompanied him with the JPO and KZNPO.
Gueller is looking forward to playing together!
“Philippe is a great musician and we have had wonderful experiences, most recently with the KZNPO in Durban where he played Britten. I really look forward to his Brahms and his sensitive interpretation.”
Graffin, too, is happy about the new collaboration
“I am looking forward very much to playing with Bernhard again. He is such a refined musician, a generous person, playing with him is like chamber music. As the Brahms concerto is in fact a symphony with violin principal, it is simply a treat.”
For Graffin, playing in South Africa is like coming home, since he has many friends in the CPO.
“I don’t go there simply to perform another concert; it is a gift to be able to play with them again. I always cherish the memory of some of the symphonies I heard them play.”
“South Africa has become for me like a special place, the place where some of my friends are, where I have memories now, and a part of me likes to return there. Also, it is an incredibly exciting country, it does not let you go away. Recently I played a concert in the US with an orchestra and I had met the director in South Africa. When we met again, it was like two friends away from home, in some ways.”
Graffin, who teaches in the Conservatoires of both Paris and Brussels, says he lucky to have a very flexible schedule at these schools so he can play concerts and recitals throughout the year, making up for the lessons before and after. He teaches advanced students, but this doesn’t lessen the commitment and he is always having to divide his time between them and a career that includes concerts, festivals, recording and of course the preparation before like learning new pieces. Even so the contact never stops. There is always a concert , a festival, a recording, a piece to learn plus the equal time he spends at each school. And then there’s the travelling!
He grew up with a sculptor father, so the arts were always part of his life
“I grew up learning music, and the first music he learned was jazz. Especially the sound of Stephane Grappelli ‘s violin. One thing led to another and I became very eager to play that instrument.”
He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where at the age of 16 he won first prize. Then he went to Bloomington in Indiana where he studied with Josef Gingold, a pupil of Ysaye, and with Philip Hirshhorn. Then he came to the attention of Yehudi Menuhin. “He was always an example for me, from my earliest impressions of the violin. Naively, I tried to correspond with him to no avail! But when I participated in the Fritz Kreisler competition, he noticed me. And he decided to help me, by making a recording together, with him conducting. That was my first and incredible experience!”
The historic line that came from studying with Gingold had an impact on Graffin.
“It affects the way I hear music. The sound I tried to have, the perception of rubato, and values in music. Recently I researched Ysaye´s playing and his students’ memories of him, all over the world, and I am surprised at how it is close to the education I had from Gingold. One thing is for sure, for me Ysaye isn’t that far away, in terms of time, and I regard him as a contemporary violinist. I think his influence of playing is underestimated.”
Graffin has been busy – he arrives in South Africa in early June, plays with the KZNPO on June 8 and then comes to Cape Town to give a concert with the CPO and a recital for Cape Town Concert Series. Before he arrives, he will have just completed a two week patch of 12 concerts in two different festivals in Holland and in Germany, seen his students in Paris and Brussels to help them prepare for their exams. He leaves us to see his students again, before participating in a festival in Brussels ‘festival musiq 3’, then join the jury for a competition for young artists in Italy. Then the European summer brings one festival after another … from Germany to Pablo Casals in Prades, the Academie Franco Americaine of Fontainebleau and back to Belgium, Holland, Spain.
Then, as though he has time on his hands, he is starting a new festival in Knokke le Zoute in Belgium, where Ysaye had his summer residence and where he taught and composed his famous solo sonatas.
Who: Philippe Graffin
What: Brahms Violin Concerto with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra / Recital for Cape Town Concert Series
Where: The City Hall, Cape Town / Baxter Concert Hall
When: 15 June at 8pm, and 10 June 2017, at 3pm
Info, book: http://bit.ly/GraffinPlaysBrahms
http://online.computicket.com/web/event/philippe_graffin_matinee/1100413745/0/76916912
Web: www.cpo.org.za / www. http://www.ctconcerts.co.za/
WS
