An Interview with Catherine Leonard

Bernard Clarke: Catherine, is the violin your first instrument and when did you begin playing it?

Catherine Leonard: It was actually my second instrument. I started with piano about six months before when I was about nine and a half. Piano dominated for the first six years until I was about sixteen. I was not concentrating on music in those years -- I was more interested in skateboarding. I didn't focus on the violin really until I was about sixteen.

BC: When did you first start coming across contemporary music?

CL: Ian Wilson was the turning point for me. I was a late starter and late developer with violin. I didn't concentrate very young and there were times when I wished I had because I felt a bit behind but all things even out. So in that period [when I was studying] in America and even after it when I came back to Europe I was still getting through all the standard repertoire and I was hardly thinking of contemporary music. I played a bit of Cage and I dabbled in America with chamber music but it was violin concertos, all the standard repertoire and competitions. Ian Wilson heard me playing in 1993 or 1993 in the [National] concert hall in Dublin and I think that was my first introduction to him. I approached him to write a piece for me and we got funding from the Arts Council. That was a piece called from the book of longing, which I've played a lot since then and also recorded with Hugh Tinney. So he [Ian Wilson] woke me up to what was out there.

BC: Ian Wilson is not a composer who sits still, in fact quite the opposite. He's not content to rest on his laurels. You've played a lot of his music over the years. Is he making it more difficult for you?

CL: He knows the things that I shy away from. One of his trios is called the Seven Last Words. That's a sort of Messiaen-type work, it has that whole spiritual overtone, like Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. It's a phenomenal work but there is one section at the end and just like the end of the Messiaen it transcends everything. I remember having to unclamp my hand afterwards because [the piece ended] in the high register, literally up near the bridge for about ten minutes. That's what Ian wanted I think -- for it to have bows as slow as possible and as high as possible. That makes it very effective but of course also very difficult. So I was saying, 'Next time you write something for me, please not ten minutes up there!' And I've played other things [by Ian Wilson]. Eigenschatten was an interesting piece, which was a departure for him I suppose. That was a piece with tape where I was recorded while playing and then we came together, the recording and me. I've heard some of his recent pieces and even though I play a lot of his pieces already I want another piece because I suppose 2002 was the last one I've had and his music has evolved so much since then. I just heard at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival a new piece, re:play, for the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, Hugh Tinney, a saxophone player [Cathal Roche]and Malachy Robinson on double bass. Then the latest string quartet CD of the Callino's I really enjoy too. I love the darkness in his music.

BC: Another composer you've played is George Crumb. Crumb isn't easy to play either.

CL: No, I think the first piece I played was the Four Nocturnes for violin and piano. It was just like another language; I was giving up on it half the time. Luckily I played it with a pianist who was a specialist contemporary music. There are certain things [in the piece] she just told me not to take so literally. I mean very, very difficult things that are asked for and sometimes it is just an effect or a gesture. This kind of music is theatrical and recently I played The Eleven Echoes of Autumn, and that's for clarinet, flute, piano and violin. We had a wonderful lighting set up and we were amplified a bit too, because we were playing in some dry theatres. And he does ask for that[amplification] -- he's very specific. I love the fact that we have pages of notes from the composer. Beethoven didn't quite necessarily do that!

BC: There's a great theatrical element to Crumb's music. There's a string quartet, Black Angels, which is written for electric string quartet, recorded by a few different ensembles, particularly Kronos. I'm wondering how you feel about the electric violin.

CL: I've only played on an electric violin once and it was great fun because the sound just pours out, you don't have to do anything it seems. It definitely seems easier but I think I'll stick to the old traditional one for now. Never say never: I've got a long career ahead and I know I'm going to be playing a lot of contemporary music along with the standard repertoire, so who knows. But I don't know of a piece that I really want to play that's for electric violin necessarily. There are composers like Nono, and I really want to learn that big thirty-minute piece, La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, but that's with electronics.

BC: Just in terms of building an interpretation, I know it's difficult to talk about but do you literally go phrase by phrase, page by page, note by note?

CL: With any piece of music?

BC: Particularly contemporary. Let's say a piece by Ian Wilson or when you do get around to Nono?

CL: Well initially what I usually like to do is read through the score and perhaps with Nono I listen again, to [Gidon] Kramer of course, one of my favourites. I don't like to rely on listening to a recording but you have to with some pieces. Then after that, [it's] literally learning the notes. I'd practically have the TV on -- well I wouldn't but you know...

BC: You're quite casual?

CL: Well not casual. If you take the Schoenberg trio that I'm starting to work on... I hate writing the fingerings and bowings in but I have to, lightly anyway. I literally have to put a number on top of every note at the moment, just to learn the notes. So it's completely anti- the music at the moment. It just depends on the difficulty of the piece. With Eigenschatten I remember Ian [Wilson] came up [to visit]. That's lovely, this connection that I have with him and I'm sure in the future I'll work with more composers. I just think he's [Ian Wilson] such a unique voice and one of the best around. I remember he came up and we worked through some things and he changed and modified things.

BC: Well in history we have, especially in the nineteenth century, great virtuosos who were also composers. There's been a tight relationship, a lot of the time, between composer and soloist. You have everybody, masters like David Oistrakh working with Shostakovich.

CL: Prokofiev and Brahms with Joachim...

BC: Even Stravinsky playing with lesser players than David Oistrakh. But working intensively and very closely. We're now in an age where we are emailing, phoning or texting each other. Are we in danger of losing that relationship between the violinist and the composer?

CL: It very much depends on the composer too and their knowledge of the instruments. There have been composers who have written things that just didn't work. It happens to me. I get scores sent to me and sometimes it doesn't always happen that you get the chance to actually say, 'OK, I want to run through this with my pianist and see what it's like.' And it has happened where it's just been clearly laughably unplayable. So there's one thing to be challenged on the instrument and I think that's great to do new things and to be forced to stretch yourself. But it has happened [where a composer has written something that was unplayable] and in one case I rang the girl up and said, 'Do you want to meet because that note can't be played at the same time?' I had to do it in such a nice way but hopefully that helped her because it was clear that it had been written on a computer. So it depends on the composer too, if they're the type of person who puts themselves out there, and in this day and age they really have to. It's a whole package isn't it? To make it as a composer isn't easy -- as a performer is hard enough, but a composer!

BC: Just to go back Catherine to an area we touched on earlier: your formative years as a young musician and a younger violinist. Things weren't as advanced when you started out then as they are now, it's certainly much more advanced now for players. Paradoxically did that actually make you a better player?

CL: At the time I wasn't too bogged down with the technical aspects of the composition I was playing. But as I got older of course it is important to have more background and that enriches your playing. But I like to think of what Messiaen said at the end of his notes for the Quartet for the End of Time. He goes into very in depth explanations as to how to play it for each instrument and the compositional techniques used, and [as a player] you can get a bit bogged down with that. But at the end of that he writes, and I paraphrase, 'After everything I've said, forget about it and just play the piece and make music and bring that across to the audience'. So that's what it's all about. I like to think of that with whatever I play. I know that Schoenberg also said that it saddened him that people got so hung up on the technical aspects of his twelve-tone system and I think musicians too tend to think of his music as so academic and start to play it that way. So when I approach any piece of music, whether it be contemporary [or from the classical tradition], I think of it that way. It's the performance at the end of the day.

BC: It's the communication?

CL: The communication, which I think is very important.

BC: Speaking of communication, lots of people are frightened of contemporary music. They hear the words 'contemporary music' and they go running in the opposite direction. I know you're with the chamber ensemble in the States [Camerata Pacifica] and are actively, you just told me, integrating Schoenberg and Crumb and whomever to Mozart and Schubert and whatever else is on the program. Have you any ideas how we can make it less terrifying for audiences?

CL: Well personally I see my job to connect the past, the present and the future and bring that across to the audience in a compelling way. I know there are specialists who play only contemporary music and that's great, but I don't like to isolate it too much from the rest of the repertoire. With chamber music the great thing is that intimacy that one has at one's disposal. So with a smaller audience you have more chance to interact with them. So when I programme a recital or when I have a programme with my group in America, the second half might be a Mozart Piano Quartet and the first half a piece by Ian Wilson or George Crumb. That's the great thing about the audiences there, because we have a very regular audience and newcomers all the time as well. In the break or at the end of the concert they will have animated discussions amongst themselves as to whether or not they like this, what they thought of this [work] and we talk with them too. I think it's so important to be part of this whole living, creative process and the performer is as responsible for that as the composer. It's important as to how we present it to the audience.

With contemporary music, I often find when I play a recital and somebody younger comes up to me, who maybe doesn't know anything about [classical] music that they will always pick on the contemporary piece you played. 'Wow, I just loved that, I loved Lutoslawski -- it reminded me of this, it reminded me of that Kubrick film or Hollywood movie score'. That's great because they feel they don't need to have the background or the education to get it, because it's more theatrical, it's more about a sound world. Whereas with the Beethoven they might get a bit bored, as crazy as that sounds to me.

Catherine Leonard was interviewed on video by Bernard Clarke in the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, on 7 August 2007.

The views expressed in this interview are those of the persons concerned and are not necessarily those of the Contemporary Music Centre.

Catherine Leonard was interviewed on video by Bernard Clarke in the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, on 7 August 2007.

The views expressed in this interview are those of the persons concerned and are not necessarily those of the Contemporary Music Centre.