The Armenian-American violist Kim Kashkashian has long made a specialty of new
music and even new musical forms, collaborating with such contemporary composers as Sofia
Gubaidulina, Krzysztof Penderecki, Giya Kancheli, György Kurtág and Arvo Pärt.
The spring of 2002 sees the release, on the ECM label, of Kashkashian's
recording of two works by Luciano Berio. Voci is scored for viola and
orchestra, while Naturale calls for viola and percussion; both works are
directly inspired by Sicilian folk songs which Berio collected himself.
(Accompanying the two works on the ECM disc are six field recordings made in
Sicily and taken from the ethnomusicological archives of the Accademia Nazionale
di Santa Cecilia in Rome.)
Recently the British journalist, BBC Radio producer and andante contributor Michael Church met with Kashkashian to discuss Voci and Naturale, working with Berio and the inspiration she draws from the traditional music of her own ethnic group.
Michael Church: What drew you to these works?
Kim Kashkashian: Berio's music has always been important for me, and through his first wife Cathy Berberian my connection with him went way back. And though I very much like Voci, not many people play it. It requires a conductor who can deal with the lack of vertical precision — the orchestra will be doing one thing and the viola will catch up with something a bit similar, but later. I found that Naturale, which was composed later, and which was designed to be a theater work, was a distilled version of Voci, and therefore made a good way into [understanding] it.
MC: Did Berio coach you?
KK: I met him in Florence and said I had a few questions, so I took my viola into the studio, where he folded his arms, put his head back, and said, "No questions, just play!" So I did. And every once in a while he'd lean forward and gesture his disagreement — not like that, like this — until it became clear what I needed to do.
MC: And what was that?
KK: To get away from the traditional classical style. For example, we have certain kinds of glissandi, but he wanted none of that. He wanted me to work like a folk singer — he demonstrated everything through singing; he said singing was the best tool we have. He wanted me to translate the folk singer's vocal apparatus onto the string.
MC: Can you explain that a little?
KK: It had partly to do with how you weight the bow. It was a way of bending the notes, how you shape the phrases, and it also involved a completely different kind of pizzicato. He wanted me to pluck with the fourth finger of the left hand, and at the same time hit the string with the bow. This gives you a percussion sound, but on the pitch. He'd also say "Please don't vibrate [i.e., use vibrato]. Just play straight through." I went home and thought about it, and realized that my modern copy of the Amati viola I usually play was better for this that the Amati itself. The old instrument was too soft, too gentle; it didn't like to do those things, especially the note-bending.
MC: The folk elements are strongly diffused, rather than seen clearly.
KK: Yes. He orchestrates around the melodic source material and transforms it. He changed its character — he didn't always follow the meaning of the words of the song. He often took it somewhere entirely different.
MC: How important is it to you as a performer to know what the songs are about?
KK: It's important to know the origin, the background and the circumstances under which the songs were first sung. And to know what the words mean! If you listen to "Ninna Nanna" as a lullaby, that's one thing. But if somebody tells you the mother is singing "Please take my child, God, because I have no way to feed it," then that's a very different thing. Sometimes knowledge is vital.
On the other hand, your organic response should be such that you don't always need to understand the words explicitly — and that is certainly our goal, as classical musicians. Our goal is to let the music become such a force for transformation that it makes verbalization of the message unnecessary.
MC: Realistically, how often can that ideal be attained?
KK: Only occasionally — I agree it's a lot to expect.
MC: And doesn't the audience need help with a text, when a text is the basis for the piece?
KK: I don't know. I think it's a bit of a mythos, this idea that you always have to know. I don't want to be hard-nosed and lay down a rule, because it depends on the situation, on the music, and on the sort of audience you have. But as with visual art, it's important that the person perceiving should have the freedom to see what they see — not only with abstract art, but even with Renaissance art. Most people today don't know the Renaissance codes — that a dog means this, and a dead bird means that — but they don't actually need to know. They can still experience the work in a deep way. I think the same applies to the acoustic arts.
MC: Do you see Berio's folk-music investigations as part of a
general trend?
KK: Certainly. I'm fascinated by how many contemporary composers are attempting to connect with old source material, folk material. Perhaps this is because the classical harmonic and structural forms have been so explored — so exploded! — that we have to look for other frames of reference. But I don't think Berio has ever needed to do this consciously, because he grew up in a local vocal tradition — he has an automatic tap-root back into it now.
MC: I think you work with other composers along these lines ...
KK: Sure. Tigran Mansuryan, with whom I am collaborating at present, consciously divides his work into "modern" compositions and those in which he reworks Armenian folk songs. We've just recorded three of his modern compositions, plus a couple of what he calls crossover works based on Armenian material. And when I went back afterwards and looked at the so-called modern stuff, I saw that it had exactly the same interval connections and the same intonations — yet he had been quite unaware of that.
On one of my visits to Armenia I went to his house and got him to play me some songs, and they were so beautiful that I went back the next day and recorded them, then I took the material back to Manfred Eicher at ECM. The next time we were in the studio with Manfred, and had just finished the recording we were scheduled to do, he got Tigran to sing. What came out will be on our next ECM record, alongside the scheduled stuff.
MC: How Armenian are you?
KK: A good question! On paper, by blood, a hundred per cent. My father was a young boy when he came to the States, and my mother, though born in the States, had not heard a word of English by the time she was sent to school at the age of six. I was born in Detroit, which makes me a good American. But I have a deep connection to the Armenian people, to the land itself. When I go there, inexplicable things happen — I find myself making chance acquaintances with people with whom I feel I belong, on a much deeper level than with the people I've known all my life.
MC: How have your Armenian origins marked your music?
KK: Hugely. My father used to sing all the time — all the operas, all the Armenian songs — so I grew up with that. And every Sunday we would visit Grandma and Auntie Mary, and Auntie Mary and Daddy would sing, and Grandma would dance — which wasn't too hard for her, because it was a circle dance, she didn't have to jump around a lot!
We didn't have anything to do with the Armenian church, but that and its music are so important that I had to catch up on it later, by a lot of listening. My generation of Armenian-Americans is really American, but we have something in our blood which boils up when it has anything to do with Armenia. The language, the songs, the melodies, the interval tension — all that goes back into my deep self. They were part of my life till I was ten years old.
MC: Does this also give you a bridge to the music of Georgia?
KK: Definitely. I'm sure it's because of this that I empathize so much
with the music of Giya Kancheli, for example. The same interval structure, and
the same underlying melancholy. Even our happy songs are about
sadness.
