Violinist Gil Shaham regularly solos all the time with the world's major orchestras in the world's major music capitals.
Among those his official biography lists: the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston, Chicago and San Francisco symphonies; the Israel, Los Angeles and New York philharmonics and the Orchestre de Paris.
But Shaham says there is also an appeal to playing in smaller cities, where "musicians are so happy to play and audiences are so happy to attend concerts, where the music maybe is appreciated so much more.
"Not that we took it for granted, but considering the impact of the pandemic, we appreciate how precious" live performance can be.
"I love going to both — big cities and small."
Shaham will be making his first visit to Little Rock this weekend, making his debut with the hometown band, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, with Samuel Barber's "Violin Concerto." Geoffrey Robson, the orchestra's artistic director and a mean violinist himself, will conduct.
Shaham says there is a certain appeal in soloing when a violinist is on the podium.
"Violinists are a strange breed and see the world differently," he says. "We have a secret language and can identify each other very quickly.
"When I say in rehearsal that I'm on a down bow or that I have run out of bow, that I'm on the A string, that I have to make this adjustment," he says, there's no need to translate.
The covid-19 pandemic postponed Gil Shaham’s debut with the Arkansas Symphony from 2020 to 2022. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Chris Lee) Shaham, who turned 51 last Saturday, was born in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., and moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies at age 7. He received annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he debuted with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic, and the following year took the first prize in Israel's Claremont Competition. That helped get him a scholarship at Juilliard.
Shaham's more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs (many of them on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004) have earned multiple Grammy Awards; Musical America named him "Instrumentalist of the Year" in 2012. He plays the 1699 "Countess Polignac" Stradivarius, and lives in New York with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.
That he is playing the Barber concerto here is part and parcel of a two-decade focus on the violin concertos of the 1930s, in particular the eight years between 1931 and 1939, when a large number of the era's most prominent composers wrote violin concertos. The list includes not just Barber but Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Bela Bartok, Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, William Walton, Erich Korngold, Aram Khatchaturian and Karol Szymanowski.
"I was reading this list to a friend," Shaham recalls, "and he said, 'These are all the most famous composers of the 20th century.' Or certainly most of them."
He's not exactly sure why, though he describes the period as also being "a golden age of violinists" — a list of distinguished "fiddlers" active in the '30s includes Jascha Heifetz, Jascha Brodsky, Mischa Elman, Nathan Milstein, Zino Francescatti, Josef Gingold, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Joseph Fuchs and Efrem Zimbalist. However, these weren't necessarily the ones who premiered the great works of the time.
Actually, Shaham confides, that chronological focus is "actually mostly an excuse for me to play music that I love."
The Barber concerto, he adds, "is one of the great American masterworks. I was 13 when I heard it for the first time, at the Aspen Music Festival.
"I don't remember the name of the violinist, the conductor or the orchestra, but from the opening melody, two minutes into the piece, I knew I had to play it. I've been trying to do it justice ever since."
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Robson will open the concert, the fourth of the orchestra's 2021-22 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks season, with Florence Price's "Ethiopia's Shadow in America" and close it with Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 5" in e minor, op. 64.
The concert will be recorded for subsequent streaming, available to ticket buyers starting at 7:30 p.m. March 5.
Robson will meet patrons and take questions via a free virtual brown bag lunch on Zoom at noon today. Visit arkansassymphony.org/brownbag-robson.
Violinist Gil Shaham
- What: Violinist Gil Shaham solos in the “Violin Concerto” by Samuel Barber with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and conductor Geoffrey Robson in the fourth concert of the orchestra’s 2021-22 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks season. Also on the program: Florence Price: “Ethiopia’s Shadow in America”; Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky: “Symphony No. 5” in e minor, op. 64.
- When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday
- Where: Robinson Center Performance Hall, 426 W. Markham St. at Broadway, Little Rock
- Sponsor: Stella Boyle Smith Trust
- Tickets: $16-$72; $10 students and active-duty military; free to students with the purchase of an adult ticket using the Entergy Kids’ Ticket.
- Information: (501) 666-1761, Extension 1; ArkansasSymphony.org
- Covid-19 protocols: Masks covering the nose and mouth and proof of covid-19 vaccination or a recent (within 72 hours) negative test required to be admitted. arkansassymphony.org/safety.