REVIEWS Nice-MATIN, December 6, 1998 Horseplay at the Nice opera: the fantastic and whimsical
violinist from Nice divided the audience with his facetious and tonic interpretation of a
Mozart concerto. Friday evening, Gilles Apap appeared simply as himself, with his shirt untucked in front of the Philharmonic Orchestra all in bow ties. On stage, he didn't remain glued to one spot which is typical of soloists; he turned around, went to the other musicians of the orchestra, giving the impression of the conviviality one finds at jazz performances or other genres. He was at ease. He was at home. He was at a festive occasion. Between pieces, he made reflections to the public. In the cadenza of the D Major concerto of Mozart, he launched into an improvisation inspired by folk and Hindu, he began to whistle even while playing the violin! Some gibes rang out from the hall, "Send the clown outside!" threw out one voice, however, bravos encouraged the violinist to go on. "This way, you like it?" replied Apap before taking off into another improvisation. During this time, the orchestra waited, silently, for the end of the concerto! Everything was taken in good humor. Gilles Apap returned to give an encore..an Irish air, seated on the edge of the stage with his legs dangling in the air. The opera has rarely seen anything like that at a classical music concert. Sometimes, classical music becomes bored with itself. One
needs authentic artists like Gilles Apap to wake things up, even if that chagrins some
pretty wits out on a Sunday afternoon and troubles those obsessed by habit. Its a good bet
that the facetious Mozart would have loved hearing his work played thus. LE MONDE December 17, 1998 Gilles Apap: Free me from the notes! Violin virtuoso, recalcitrant star, the Frenchman puts
gypsy in his Beethoven, Irish in his Vivaldi and lives alone in a cabin in the United
States. The spirit of a Bohemian. Gilles Apap: Because no one asks me! You live far from the rest of the world. I've been living in Santa Barbara, California for thirteen years. I live alone in a little house built of redwood, with a hammock, no television and three acres of land. Furthermore, I travel a lot and I play sometimes in Alaska, in Pakistan, in Russia, in India... Aden: It's curious for a classical musician. Your career... Apap: A word which doesn't mean anything to me. I want to make a living, but music, it is first and foremost a pleasure. Aden: What do you do in India? Apap: I give some courses at the university of Benares. I teach some techniques and, in return, I learn their techniques. I have some Indian friends, some masters of the Indian violin, they're like my second family. One tries to find a connection between our style of playing, one improvises. For example, they listen to the cadenza from the Bartok 'Violin concerto' and for them it's a raga! Aden: You're using this style when you play Western music? Apap: No, but on the other hand, I'm using it to teach the kids, which I often do after I play concerts in the United States. Aden: And why not in France? Apap: Because when I propose it here in France, they tell me they haven't got enough money to pay me and when I say, "But I'll do it for free", they think I'm crazy. Aden: You play some gypsy, some jazz, some classical, some blue grass, some Irish, it comes to you like singing, does that pose a problem for interpreting classical music? Apap: When I make people laugh, yes that poses a problem, because I do all that very seriously. I'm not an 'entertainer', even when I start singing. And if that's disruptive, that's not my point. To play all the styles of music, its a real pleasure, a relaxation that classical musicians hardly understand. In classical music, one is sequestered by the notes. To have played with Grapelli, Menuhin or the Irish musicians, that's freed me. Aden: With the national orchestra of l'Ile de France, you're going to play nothing but the virtuostic pieces of the repertoire, it's curious after all you have just said? Apap: But I love playing virtuosic programs! First of all, I make my living this way, and second of all, it allows me to teach the kids for free, to give them the desire, to trigger something. Aden: You work a lot? Apap: We say that I maintain the machine! I can play one whole night and then not for three days. I don't do a lot of scales! Aden: Do you have a fetishism for rare violins? Apap: I recorded the sonatas of Bartok on a two million dollar Stradivarius which someone lent me, of course, it's magnificent, but it requires so much care! So I play on an 'all-terrain' violin-capable of three weeks in Alaska and some trekking in Tibet- made by a violin making friend in California. Aden: What do you like the most about music? Apap: I love when the body, the head and
the heart are in a phrase. Like my Hindi friends say, it's the language of God. La Marseillaise, Wednesday March 30, 1999 It was Tamas Vasary, piano virtuoso who left his piano for the baton fifteen years ago (rest assured, he is still giving recitals), who replaced Lord Menuhin, immense violinist and pedagogue for all eternity, for a program entirely dedicated to Mozart....But the major attraction of the tribute to the late master of the bow, was made in the out of the ordinary testimony of Gilles Apap in the Third Concerto of the divine Amadeus. It is difficult to pass a comparative, objective and at most, just judgment on this 36-year-old instrumentalist who is unlike any other, and whose interpretive work even the most varied or pointedly vigorous criterion would be unable to take into account. Not only did he not dress like a penguin (tuxedo), but he didn't stop walking, moving about and what's more, he allowed himself to augment the Mozartian concerto with ten minutes of his own invention. Namely, in lieu of the cadenza of the third movement, always with the theme of the Allegro in filigree, he rewarded us with a gypsy air, a glimpse of Klezmer, a country and western dance, a vague extract of the Mendelssohn Concerto, an imitation of an Indian raga, (with the cellos, violas and double basses accompanying) and after his triumph, close to his charmed audience, he offered a gift of an Irish melody nostalgic enough to make one cry. Monsieur Apap is happy to destroy the standard images which are always associated with Mozart (or any other). That is to say to break the idols into which we have transformed these genius creators, certainly, but molded to a fault, those of life itself, like our own. And then what a beautiful tribute to Menuhin, this citizen
of the world, to have this musical melting pot, representative of the multicultural
society to which we call out for a world rid of racism, of xenophobia and of ridiculous
and criminal prejudices. Astonishing and praiseworthy. Santa Barbara, The Independent May 20, 1999 When Apap left the stage to N'Kaoua, the pianist rose to the elevated occasion with Rameau's sparkling 'Rappel des oiseaux,' Rachmaninoff's dazzling 'Flight of the Bumblebee,' and later a Faure Impromptu. Faure was the director of the French conservatory, but wrote music that still seems ahead of its time, rhapsodic in its freedom. The big concluding work was the Sonata No. 3 by Roumanian violinist and pianist George Enesco, who was one of the teachers of Apap's mentor, the late Yehudi Menuhin. The sonata showed Enesco to be a composer of extraordinary range, and Apap gave himself to it fully, his body language almost as eloquent as his violin. As throughout the concert, his intensity and concentration
drew the audience inside the musical experience. Forget it that this was a 'difficult'
work, that Enesco is a fairly obscure composer; with Apap as channel, there was no barrier
between the listener and the music. In an uncompromising program that demanded
intellectual and emotional participation from the audience, these fine musicians gave us
one of the most enjoyable evenings of music in recent memory. |
