Maxim Vengerov is a world renowned violinist, conductor, two-time Grammy Award winner, husband and father of two daughters. Living such a hectic life, even five minutes matter in his busy schedule. In this interview, the musician shares his plans for starting a new online platform for giving concerts and teaching music and reveals his thoughts on educational methods, self-organisation techniques, and, most importantly, speaks of his attitude to teaching. He is well qualified to do so. Having given his first masterclass at the age of 17, there is no doubt that Maxim Vengerov is a maestro with a great deal of experience. This made it all the more interesting to converse with him about the Malta Classic Music Academy (MCMA), which is to be held in April and May 2021 in Malta within the framework of the large-scale InClassica International Music Festival (6+) where he is scheduled to deliver a series of masterclasses and also perform in concert.

– Let’s start with the main press event: this April-May, Maltese capital of Valetta will host the 10th InClassica International Music Festival. Apart from the ambitious programme and live performances by the most famous soloists of our time, the festival agenda also embraces the Music Academy, your masterclasses being the essential part of it. Judging by this year’s situation, InClassica will be one of the first major festivals after the lockdown. Have you been preparing yourself somehow for the Music Academy?

– I have already been giving masterclasses to Academy students in Malta. To be honest, it doesn’t matter to me what level of training the student has as I can work both with accomplished professional musicians and beginners. It is the experience of communication that I enjoy and as I’ve been teaching since a young age I have a wealth of experience, over 25 years to be exact! Teaching others has always a pleasure for me, but especially now, in the present climate. With concerts so scarce, I feel the need to share the knowledge of music more than ever.

– What are your thoughts on the festival’s location? Have you ever performed in Malta before?

– We all know Malta as a resort where one can holiday in style and enjoy the sun, sea and relax but now we have the European Foundation for Support of Culture (EUFSC) organizing a large-scale festival and inviting world-famous artists to participate. It is an amazing opportunity.

President of the EUFSC, Konstantin Ishkhanov, is a well-known personality in the world of classical music. I’ve been friends with him for a long time. He is doing a great deal for the region’s development, for Malta, and is committed to nurturing and building a cultural paradise here.

I’m both pleased and excited to have the opportunity to participate once again in this festival and hope to be able to perform live rather than online with the British Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which will be conducted by Sergey Smbatyan. We have a very interesting program lined up that includes Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony and Tzigane Rapsody for Violin and Orchestra by M. Ravel, as well as “Seascapes” by InClassica festival’s resident composer, Alexey Shor.

– Were you familiar with Shor’s music before?

– Of course, I’ve already played his “Seascapes.” It’s very soulful music and is pleasant to the ear. It is modern classic, as opposed to ultramodern, which is sometimes difficult to perceive.  I’ve played his compositions more than once after some very serious pieces of music - such as violin concertos by Bruch and Brahms – and they were always well received by the audience, which was satisfying.

– What are you now working on from a professional perspective?

– All the concerts have unfortunately been cancelled again, so our technology team and I are developing a new website where I will teach music. This will be a dedicated platform for concerts and music education. Most importantly, I will give free lessons to all who wish to undertake them. I’ve made this announcement on my social media accounts and we have already received a huge number of applications from all over the world.

– How will the students be selected?

– We will have an electronic lottery system. I plan to take students of all levels and it’s down to random choice. Once a week the system will pick a student whom I’ll be training.

– So when are the series of concerts scheduled to start on this platform?

– In mid-January, we tried to play together with my pianist: I was performing from Monaco, whilst he was in Paris. We are now in the middle of an intense test period. Given the current quality of internet connection, it is unrealistic to try to perform from two cities simultaneously but we have  a very capable team and have been working and testing the platform for more than a year already. This will prove to be useful both for students and teachers whom we plan to involve in the future. It’s important for me as a musician, teacher and also as a father as my daughters also study online.

– Why don’t you teach them yourself?

– Do you have children? If you do then you’ll know how difficult it is! My daughters will listen to anyone, except their own dad! I think it’s quite normal. For example, my daughter Lisa told me  “I want to play with you but you always talk to me like a teacher.” To which I replied “But that’s who I am!” Her answer was “You can teach anyone you want, but please be a dad with me” (laughs). That’s why my daughters are taught by other teachers.

– You followed your parents’ footsteps, didn’t you? Your mother conducted  a choir and wrote the book titled “Pedagogical Etude” a few years ago. Your father was an oboist in the Philharmonic Orchestra. How did your parents teach you music?

– It was a different time. When I was five I had already performed on stage even though I had only been studying for a year. I remember being in Moscow at six years old  and an elderly man coming  up to me and saying: “You performed like an adult musician”. Those words were a huge compliment and had a massive impact on the rest of my life - but at the same time it imposed a huge responsibility on my parents, teachers and me, personally.  In retrospect, I think it was too much pressure. I believe now a child should be a child. I’m not saying that one should study just for pleasure, but music lessons are essentially 90% work and only 10% pleasure. A child does not always feel like sitting at a musical instrument or practicing the violin. I struggled with this at times but I was forced to study which sometimes took away the pleasure.

– You are probably the first person to admit it. It’s so wonderful to make music, they always say…

– Music is beautiful. I love it so much and even as a child I felt the same way. I felt at one with the instrument, the union of my body and the violin each time I took it in my hands but I was also just a child and after twenty minutes or so I would lose concentration and would want to run and play.

Here’s an interesting fact: In sport a child has a coach. That child will go to the sports club and spend maybe two or three hours there daily doing workouts, but afterwards he or she goes back home and continues living a normal life. Unfortunately, this doesn’t exist in music. |The parent has to be the coach. I can’t understand why music coaches don’t exist in the same way as they do with sport as many parents don’t have the time to dedicate to their child’s classes. There should be tutors who could at least prepare the child for the next music class but even then two lessons a week with the principal teacher is not enough for a serious student of music.

– Moreover, parents themselves are often not musicians…

– Believe me it’s worse if they are! It is hard for me to teach my daughters because I understand music and I can be quite demanding! They don’t like it. No one likes it when a parent demands a lot from a child but they are more likely to accept it from a teacher who is not a parent. In reality the teaching of music today is still far from perfect and could be improved.

Reverting to the issue of my upbringing: when a child has to do classes with his parents 3-4 hours a day (which in my case was closer to 7-8 hours a day), sometimes it may turn into real torture. Sure, when I entered the Central Music School at the age of seven, I had already been playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, which is already the pinnacle for a violinist. I had a fairly high level of proficiency, but I could have achieved it at the age of 11, 12 or even 16 – there would have been nothing wrong with that. It was like a lease on life in the USSR, however. I have no regrets. Overall, I had rather a happy childhood, but it was the reality of this time. Today things are very different.

Still, interestingly enough, the old system is now being actively applied in China where parents work hard with their children for 7-8 hours a day. It gets results but to be honest, it seems to me that such methods are harmful for the child’s psyche. First and foremost, music is a means of being happy and should help develop a harmonious inner world within the musician that can then be conveyed to others.

My childhood was a very personal experience and both my mother and I now agree that I was   placed under a lot of pressure but overall it was a happy time growing up and I have many nonmusical memories of playing in the yard and cycling. In fact, it was often my mother who told me to stop practicing and go ride my bike!

– How do you manage everything, given such a tight schedule?

– It is all a matter of time management. I plan everything minute by minute. Five minutes can really make a difference but the schedule may change. It happens all the time. For example,  say I plan my day and then something changes. At this point I have to prioritize and probably postpone something for another time. One needs to be realistic. It is not always possible to squeeze everything into just one day.  I also try to keep myself in musical shape. Even now, when there are no concerts, I have a daily routine and practice for 1-2 hours daily. Moreover, we also have our own platform , plus lessons, teaching, studying the score, rehearsing future concerts, negotiating with managers, partners and organizations. It takes up a lot of time and I have many online meetings.

Above all else, it is important not to get hung up on things and to enjoy the process. If something does not work out today, it will work out tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then definitely someday. I like planning things, but also deviating from the rules. That is why Bach’s music is such a great inspiration for me. His work is like a Bible for musicians: there are so many rules and at the same time there are so many exceptions to them. It is the same with life itself. Time and freedom should go hand in hand with each other.

– I know that when you were about to graduate from Yuri Simonov’s orchestra conductor course, you were planning to write a book. Are you still working on it?

– Yes, back then, I was writing a paper titled “The Orchestra as A Conductor’s Instrument”.  Such theoretical work makes you think, and a lot of new ideas came to mind. When it comes to a book, however, maybe I will write one in 10 or 15 years from now as I still have a long way to go to reach maestro Simonov’s level as he is so far ahead of his time. He is a brilliant conductor and a hard act to follow. Simonov invented his own manual technique. He studied with the greats, with Rabinovich – the Russian-German school which takes its origins in Gustav Mahler’s art. Having taken the basics from maestro Simonov, I went my own way. It is a must for every artist to find his own path. My experience as a violinist and a teacher has left a certain imprint too, of course.

Yuri Ivanovich recently wrote a book about three concerts by Tchaikovsky – a manual for young conductors on how to accompany these concerts. May God grant him a long and happy life, so that he can write more books. He is a true goldmine of knowledge and taught me many things, starting with self-organization and discipline. He used to say: “When you are a violinist, everyone can wait for you, but if you are a conductor and you are late, then you’ve already lost the trust of the entire orchestra.”