Miroirs CA: In Conversation with Anne Akiko Meyers

Miroirs CA
Leonne Lewis

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers doesn’t just set the standard; she is the standard. Her internationally acclaimed recordings and performances have a distinction that’s all about interpretative sophistication, silky sounds and crystal intonation. She also has a keen interest in promoting and commissioning works by composers of our time.

A child prodigy in the truest sense, Meyers performed with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta at age twelve. Her studies include the Colburn School in Los Angeles with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld, Indiana University with Josef Gingold and The Juilliard School with Felix Galimir and Dorothy DeLay.

Meyers received the Avery Fisher Career Grant award and in 2014 was Billboard’s number one classical charts instrumentalist. She performs a varied repertoire that includes Bach, Bruch, Barber, Prokofiev, Arvo Part and premieres of au courant works such as Somei Satoh’s Violin Concerto, Joseph Schwantner’s Angelfire for amplified violin and orchestra, John Corigliano’s Lullaby for Natalie (for Anne’s first-born daughter Natalie) and cadenzas by Wynton Marsalis for Mozart’s violin concerto No. 3, K. 216.

Meyers plays the legendary Ex-Vieuxtemps 1741 Guarneri del Gesu.

She discusses the importance of playing composers of our time with Editor Leonne Lewis.

HOW MUCH INPUT DO YOU GIVE WHEN COMMISSIONING WORKS BY COMPOSERS OF OUR TIME, SUCH AS MASON BATES’ VIOLIN CONCERTO, EINOJUHANI RAUTAVAARA’S FANTASIA FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA AND SAMUEL JONES’ VIOLIN CONCERTO?

Each experience is a unique collaboration, which is what makes commissioning new works so interesting and inspiring. At the start of a new project, a commission’s length, orchestration and type of piece (concerto, fantasy, shorter work) will be decided. From there, each composer has his or her own process of creation. The Mason Bates Violin Concerto was the first concerto he wrote for any instrument and he had many questions about playability, technical challenges, harmonics, etc. It was very collaborative work and we went through many revisions until reaching the final version.

I BELIEVE EINOJUHANI RAUTAVAARA’S FANTASIA HOLDS A SPECIAL PLACE FOR YOU. WHAT MAKES HIS MUSIC SO RELEVANT?

Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote his fantasy in record time, not changing a single note. I reworked the bowings and a bit fearfully asked if he was ok with this. He thanked me for changing them and said he always found violin bow markings super challenging. After I played Fantasia for him in his apartment in Helsinki he smiled and said how beautiful it was. I couldn’t agree more.

There’s a deep spirituality and feeling of transcendence that comes from Einojuhani Rautavaara’s works. His tonal palette is much like that of a master impressionist painter – Monet to be exact! You feel nature’s grand forces in his music and it deeply stirs the soul.

IN FEBRUARY, 2018 YOU WILL PREMIERE ADAM SCHOENBERG’S VIOLIN CONCERTO WITH THE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY. COULD YOU PROVIDE A PREVIEW OF THE WORK AND ITS COMPATIBILITY WITH THE VIOLIN. {ADAM SCHOENBERG IS ON THE FACULTY OF OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE IN LOS ANGELES}

Funny you should ask this as I just got the first movement yesterday. Adam showed me a picture of the incredibly beautiful place where he got married. There was an orchard in fog that had a very ethereal quality to it. The first movement is based on that picture, as it possesses a feeling of wistfulness and quiet reflection. He told me to buckle my seatbelt because the second movement will be wicked and super challenging. The last movement returns to the original theme. To be able to discuss the music directly with the composer reveals so much more about a work than just seeing the notes on a printed page.

Miroirs CA: Anne Akiko Meyers with Philharmonia Orchestra

Mirroirs CA
By Leonne Lewis

Anne Akiko Meyers gives transcendent and breathtaking performances in this new release of works by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016), Karol Szymanowski and Maurice Ravel – using her Ex-Vieuxtemps 1741 Guarneri del Gesu - with beautifully crafted support from the Philharmonia Orchestra under Kristjan Jarvi.

Szymanowski’s first violin concerto, Op. 35, Ravel’s Tzigane and Rautavaara’s Fantasia all have the element of fantasy and rhapsodic sweep, particularly Fantasia which Meyers commissioned and premiered in March of this year with the Kansas City Symphony. While this celebrated Finnish composer’s works may not be well known to American audiences, Rautavaara’s early studies did include The Juilliard School with Vincent Persichetti and Roger Sessions.

One may detect in his writing hints of countryman Sibelius with overtones of The Swan of Tuonela, for example, but Rautavaara’s compositional style seems to contain a unique, lush and brooding landscape of intertwining melodies and imitative sequences between violin and orchestra.

From the opening chord, the listener enters a sound world that is absolutely mesmerizing for its dark, overlapping textures where demure to red-hot melodic waves of sonority from brass and strings provide a backdrop of atmospheric tension for Meyer’s flowing passagework. Her tone takes on an ethereal quality that goes right to the heart and core of the work’s veil of mystery.

She also displays an affinity for Szymanowski’s violin concerto (1916), an impressive piece of orchestrated splashes, clashes, interludes of harp, winds, especially flutes and an opening Vivace Assai that conjures up the opening temperament of Ravel’s piano concerto in G major. This composer’s Mazurkas for piano, among other compositions are worth a listen.

Meyer’s account contains a kinda introspective elusivity that includes lingering slides AND a display of turbocharged fingerwork in the Cadenza that has the characteristics of a Paganini Caprice gone avant-garde – of which we might also thank Polish violinist Paul Kochanski for input to this work, to whom it is dedicated.

Meyer’s declamatory bow strokes in the opening of Tzigane combined with rhythmic punch and rich harmonics brought this gypsy inspired work to a frenzied conclusion. It’s not often that collaboration between orchestra and soloist is so perfectly matched but supernova violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Kristjan Jarvi have hit a home run, even a grand slam with this recording!

WCNY: Anne Akiko Meyers

WNYC with host Diane Jones

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers stopped by the WCNY studios to chat with mid-day host Diane Jones about her upcoming performance with Symphoria.  She talked about “Archeopteryx,” the violin concerto she commissioned from composer Mason Bates, as well as finding the emotion in new works.

More information about Symphoria can be found here.

Strings Sessions Presents: Anne Akiko Meyers

Strings Sessions Presents: Anne Akiko Meyers – Strings Magazine

Tucked away in a rehearsal room at the San Francisco Conservatory, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers took time out of her schedule to perform a few audience-favorites for our latest Strings Session. Watch Meyers, accompanied by pianist Jeff LaDeur, perform Ennio Morricone’s “Love Theme” from Cinema Paradiso; Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel,” and Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” (arr. for violin and piano by Claus Ogerman).

Blogcritics: Anne Akiko Meyers 92nd Street Y Concert Review

Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel

“Fantasy” was the theme but versatility and diversity the watchwords the other night at the 92nd Street Y‘s Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York. Celebrated violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and pianist Akira Eguchi‘s program ranged from the 28-year-old Beethoven’s teemingly imaginative first violin sonata to an evocative work for violin and electronics, “Wreck of the Umbria,” written in 2009 by the then also 28-year-old Jakub Ciupinski and accompanied by video footage of the sunken Italian ship that, together with Meyers’s commission, inspired the piece. In between, we heard familiar pieces by Arvo Pärt and Morten Lauridsen outside their usual settings, Ravel’s rousing “Tzigane,” and one of the last compositions by Einojuhani Rautavaara, who died only last year.

Anne Akiko Meyers, photo by Vanessa Briceño-Scherzer

Meyers attacked the flashy “Tzigane” with percussive, almost schizophrenic force, her 1741 Guarneri violin’s dark, room-filling lower register resonating like the skin of a drum. Inspired by Hungarian gypsy tunes, the piece netted the most enthusiastic response and a curtain call of its own.

The program’s most substantive selections, though, were the Beethoven and the Rautavaara. The first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in D major, Op. 12 No. 1, was sunny and straightforward but also richly resonant. In the theme and variations of the second movement, the duo displayed exquisite sensitivity to the music’s spaciousness; Eguchi established a delicate rhythmic feel that left plenty of room for shock when the third variation’s minor-key triplets arrived with all the requisite heat. They then leaned into the final variation’s rocking off-beats with a jousting spirit that I suspect would have pleased the composer. And after the laughing finale I felt I could hardly imagine this sonata played any better.

Meyers commissioned Rautavaara’s “Fantasia” and has recorded it in its original violin and orchestra version. Here she presented it in an arrangement for violin and piano for the first time. The piece treads the border between romanticism and modernism and presents the composer in a thoughtful mood. Wandering melodies over gently flowing piano accompaniment evolved into watery complexities, with Meyers conveying supreme confidence and Eguchi showing a fine dynamic sense on the exposed piano passages. A lyrical triplet section near the end combined Mendelssohnian flow with Nordic cool.

It was a relatively lengthy piece to which one could surrender one’s sense of time, and ebb and flow with the music’s pure emotion as Meyers and Eguchi swayed with its strains like a pair of synchronized swimmers.

I’d heard Pärt’s “Fratres” only in its original orchestral version. A violin-and-piano iteration proved transporting, beautiful and ruminative. Meyers’s technique on the arpeggio passages and whistling tone on the high harmonics were marvels. Yet somehow Pärt’s writing rubs out any sense of showiness, instead wrapping the listener in a low-key tension that Meyers and Eguchi sustained masterfully.

At the easy-listening end of the spectrum were a transcription of Lauridsen’s popular choral work “O Magnum Mysterium” and an encore of John Corigliano’s “Lullaby for Natalie,” written for Meyers’s daughter. With its commissions and personal dedications, the concert felt like a family affair as well as a musical celebration. Both musicians are at the tops of their games.

The New York Times: Anne Akiko Meyers at 92nd Street Y

The violinist Anne Akiko Meyers at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times

The New York Times
By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim

Classical Music in NYC This Week

ANNE AKIKO MEYERS at the 92nd Street Y (April 20, 7:30 p.m.). Armed with one of the most coveted instruments in the field, this violinist has built her reputation on a polished sound and brilliant technique. For this recital, at which she will be accompanied by the pianist Akira Eguchi, Ms. Meyers will put her Guarneri through its paces with new and recent compositions by Jakub Ciupinski, Morten Lauridsen and Einojuhani Rautavaara, alongside well-loved classics by Beethoven and Ravel.
212-415-5500, 92y.org

BBC Music Magazine: Top 20 Live Events for April 2017

BBC Music Magazine

ANNE AKIKO MEYERS
92nd Street Y, New York, 20 April
Tel: 212-415-5500
Web: www.92y.org

In 2015, the Finnish composer Rautavaara wrote what turned out to be his last score, a violin-and-orchestra Fantasia for Anne Akiko Meyers (right). Meyers and Akira Eguchi present a violin and piano arrangement of the piece in a programme that also features a new arrangement of Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium, plus music by Jakub Ciupinski, Arvo Pärt, Beethoven and Ravel.

See more of BBC Music Magazine's 20 Events for April in North America and more in their April issue here.

WTVR: Famed Concert Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers

WTVR, Virginia This Morning (Richmond, VA)

Anne Akiko Meyers is one of the world’s most celebrated American Concert violin players. Anne is in town for a special performance when VCU Arts Music Presents “Rennolds: Anne Akiko Meyers” LIVE on stage Saturday, January 28th at 8pm. The show will be held at the Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall 922 Park Ave. 

Epoch Times: Performing Arts Anne Akiko Meyers - A Virtuoso Devoted to Unlocking the Mysteries of the Violin

Anne Akiko Meyers
Credit: Vanessa Briceño-Scherzer

Epoch Times
By Catherine Yang

American violinist Anne Akiko Meyers radiates inspiration. It’s a result of her being ever-inspired by everything around her. She strives to absorb rich experiences from the world and art around her, from food and music and paintings, from her husband and two young daughters, and weave from it all a rich tapestry in which her music exists.

“It’s like my blood has classical music running through it, all the time,” Meyers said. “I’m always, always thinking about how life relates to music and vice versa.”

Virtuosos do more than demonstrate great skill; they broaden our understanding of what can be done with the instrument. And Meyers certainly does so with the violin. 

Her love for music began before she was born. Her mother had read many books on how important music is to a baby’s brain, and so Meyers had been listening to classical music in the womb.

At age 4, she picked up a violin upside-down and took to it immediately.

“My father put it the right side up and said, ‘Actually, you hold it this way,’ and I’m to this day trying to figure out how to play it, 42 years later,” Meyers said. To try to play the violin is to commit your life to the craft, she said, to train and train to play the physically demanding instrument, and to express as much life and color as you can through it.

“I feel like I’m singing through the violin. That’s how I create music,” she said. “It’s an extension of my voice and my soul.”

The Deep Language of Classical Music

Meyers is known for the passion she brings to the music she plays, and her ability to resonate with audiences. She feels deeply and has the skill to channel it through her instrument, through the language of classical music.

“It expresses passion, joy, fear, strength, anger, love—it just can move you on so many different layers, it can bring back memories, it fortifies your brain, it also strengthens your overall human being,” she said. “It’s so powerful and so deep.”

“Classical music is a language that is so rich and so expressive. It’s just part of my DNA,” she said. Having studied the greats of classical music—Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert—Meyers realized that we all come from such a deep place. Her study of the classics got her interested in what this language of classical music can be used for today. She has become a champion of classical music, collaborating with many great contemporary composers to create new works for the violin.

After all, some of the famed composers of the past never wrote violin concertos, and it’s understandable to think we are missing out. “If I could go back in history and really tenaciously go after several composers who did not write a violin concerto, such as Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, I would do that,” she said. “I absolutely would have chased them to the earth’s end to write something for the violin literature.”

This is always on her mind when working with composers today, and she is fascinated with that creative process.

She has commissioned and premiered works by composers like Mason Bates, John Corigliano, Brad Dechter, Jennifer Higdon, Adam Schoenberg, Joseph Schwantner, Wynton Marsalis, and many others. 

“My eyes and ears are wide open for inspiration, new ideas, and innovative technique that can be applied to bringing classical music of today to broader audiences,” Meyers said. “I really always respond to music that I can be moved by and that I can really sink my heart and teeth into.”

Fantasia

Meyers enjoys project-based work, and many of her albums and programs showcase her masterful rendering of magical and dreamy works in her visceral way that sparks the senses.

This spring, Meyers is premiering a handful of works by living legends, composers hailed as mythical and mystical, at a concert at the 92Y on the Upper East Side titled “Fantasia: An Evening of Fantasy.” 

The concept begins with one of the last works written by the late composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, who passed away just this summer.

Meyers, a lifelong fan of the composer, had reached out to Rautavaara’s publisher during the spring of 2015 with the idea of a 15-minute fantasy, a free-form piece. To her delight he soon accepted, and at the end of summer she received a handwritten score. She immediately ran to the studio to play it through.

Meyers performed the piece for Rautavaara near the end of 2015 in Helsinki, and he remarked to her that “I wrote such beautiful music.”

Rautavaara composed music of a wide range of styles over his 87 years, but a recurring description of his work is “mystical.” Meyers says this fantasy for violin and orchestra is ethereal and soulful, with overtones of his Symphony No. 7, “Angel of Light.” 

At the 92Y, the venue where Meyers remembers making her New York recital debut, she will perform the world premiere of this “Fantasia” arranged for violin and piano.

She will also premiere an arrangement by Morten Lauridsen—another composer noted for his mythical, mystical works—for violin and piano. 

The American composer’s choral works are among the most performed in the country, and Meyers had wanted him to write a violin piece to no avail. But after witnessing a performance of her’s, he offered to do an arrangement of “O Magnum Mysterium” for violin and she happily agreed.

Also on the program is “Fratres” by Estonian composer Arvo Part, the most-played living composer today and another one of Meyers’s heroes. She had the opportunity to collaborate with Part to record some of his works, and, in a video interview afterwards, talked about how deeply his music resonated with her. “It’s like reading a Bible. It’s looking into a mirror and really analyzing yourself, going really deep within yourself,” she had said.

The spring program also includes the “Wreck of the Umbria” (2009) written for Meyers by Jakub Ciupinski, Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major, and Ravel’s “Tzigane.”

“It’s a really fascinating look at music that’s currently being composed today, as well as going back to Beethoven and Ravel and bringing those colors back to life,” Meyers said.

Many of the same works appear on Meyers’s “Fantasia” album to be released in the spring. 

An Artist’s Palette

Meyers knew early on that she wanted to play the violin for life; that she wanted to go out and perform on the violin everywhere. And she did. At age 11, she made her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the year after that soloed with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic. In 1993, she was the only musician to be granted the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, which is awarded to up to five musicians annually.

For over 30 years, she has kept an extensive touring schedule and continues to collaborate with artists all over the world. She is a top-selling musician in her genre. 

A great musical performance is a visceral experience, she says. Like having a great meal or finishing a great book, it leaves you thinking of things in a different way, and it can change your life. 

“Responding to and sharing the music with the audience and really delving into the music and trying to create something beautiful is what I am trying to do, what I am trying to create,” she said.

It’s all the better that Meyers is the current possessor of a miracle of a violin—a 1741 Guarneri del Gesu violin, in what she calls “triple mint condition.”

There are no sound post patches, nor cracks of any kind; it’s as if the violin just left the workbench of the master crafter of violins. 

The violin, nicknamed the Vieuxtemps, once belonged to the Belgian violinist Henri Vieuxtemps in the 19th century and has been used by Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Eugene Ysaye. It is considered one of the most magnificent violins in existence—and one of the most expensive, netting $16 million from an anonymous buyer in a sale in 2012.

Meyers was gifted the violin as a lifetime loan.

“It resonates and has a projection like none other,” she said. Meyers has played on many Stradivarius violins over the course of her career and knows intimately that the violins by these master artisans are one of a kind. “It’s like I’ve finally culminated, did a 180 after playing so many violins,” she said. 

She feels lucky for the experience, a deep sense of responsibility to safeguard the violin, and extraordinarily at peace with the powerful instrument in her hands. 

“Every violin is like a different, unique human being,” she said. “It has its own soul, its own entity.”

“Just as you are inserting your own soul and chemistry into the violin, it’s also giving you something; a palette of colors that are unique to that instrument,” Meyers said. With this violin, she has both light and dark: A deep, dark bass G string and a bell-like E string that brings us to cathedral heights. “You’re forever trying to solve a puzzle and also just create, and understand the mysteries of the violins.” 

Strings: Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers on a First and Final Commission from Rautavaara

Strings
By Laurence Vittes

Anne Akiko Meyers called her new CD Fantasia after the transcendent 15-minute-long concerto that Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote for her, which turned out to be the last [composition for violin] he composed before his death in July 2016 at the age of 87. Meyers will give the world premiere of Fantasia in March with the Kansas City Symphony conducted by Michael Stern; the recording was made in London with the Philharmonia conducted by Kristjan Järvi.

Due out early in 2017, the new CD will also include Ravel’s Tzigane, Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and new orchestrations of Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel and Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium, by the composer himself. I spoke to Meyers who had just moved to the Pacific Palisades with her husband and two daughters, aged four and six. She was off for an extraordinary roundtrip to Krakow, 15 hours each way, to play the Szymanowski Concerto and the world premiere of Jakub Ciupinski’s The Wreck of the Umbria, precisely scheduled so she would be back in time to take her older daughter to her first day of school.

—Laurence Vittes

Tell me about Einojuhani Rautavaara and Fantasia.
Fantasia means a lot to me. I had known Rautavaara’s music for a long time, since I was a kid who found his music browsing through the CD bins. It became a dream of mine that he would write something for me.

Was Rautavaara the ultimate composer you were after for a commission?
No. I’ve always gone after and harassed composers. I’m always thinking historically: Oistrakh, Auer, Joachim, Heifetz—they were muses for composers. They inspired such great music; just imagine if we had a concerto by Gershwin or Ravel or Rachmaninoff.

I would have just bugged the crap out of Rachmaninoff to write a violin concerto. Of course, plenty of composers say no and run the other way when they see me coming after them, but I’m tenacious.

How did the commission happen?
On a sudden impulse, out of the blue, I contacted Rautavaara’s publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, who put me in touch with him. I wrote and told him I was a big admirer of his. I asked if he would write something for me, he answered with a resounding yes, and sent me the music almost instantaneously, after which I flew to Helsinki to work with him.

What did you ask Rautavaara for?
He was 87 and I didn’t want to tire him out, so I asked for something shorter, a fantasy.

Can you describe Fantasia?
It is music like his Cantus Arcticus, with its electronic birdsongs, and his Angel of Light Symphony [Rautavaara’s Seventh Symphony, written in 1994 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra]: ethereal and mystical. It is a soulful surge of emotion. I cry each time I play it. It was shocking when he passed; this was his last [composition for violin].

How closely did you work with him?
I arrived in Helsinki to find out he hand wrote everything, and it was hard to read. We made many, many changes, but mostly technical things like fingerings. And we changed many of the bowings to make the phrases sing as much as possible; he admitted he never had much confidence in his bowings, which he had in common with a few other composers. Otherwise, there was not one change, not one note, nothing, that I wanted to change.

What did Rautavaara say when he heard it for the first time?
He said, “I wrote such beautiful music.” And I thought, “You really did.”
When did you record the album?
We recorded the whole CD in May, broken up into two sections. We did the electronics part at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City, and everything with the Philharmonia in London. English orchestras are all quick studies, each with its own soul for music.

How did the new orchestration of Morten Lauridsen’s big choral hit come about?
I had been begging Morten for years to write something, really begging him, and he had been saying, “No, no, no, I’ve got a million commissions.” Then he heard me play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in Pasadena, and he said, “I would love to do a special arrangement of this piece for you.” I said, “I’ll take one of those.” And the result is gorgeous.

You’ve made so many successful recordings. What’s your secret?
We laid down the CD in one and a half days of sessions, which were really packed. The secret on all recordings is having a great conductor to manage the time and musical pressures that come with recording, and a wonderful producer to make sure things flow. On Fantasia it was the amazing Wolf Ears Silas Brown and Susan Delgiorno; both were a complete joy.

How do recordings compare to live concerts?
Recordings may be more adventurous; it’s certainly a very different medium and process, but it’s almost impossible to compare. I love to perform live: There’s an electricity, a short fuse—a half hour and it’s over. With a recording, you’re working six hours at a stretch with one 15-minute break. You have to pace yourself, let go, and trust the engineer and producer to create the sound you’ve been working for.