Perth will be treated to its first ever concert by powerhouse violinist Hiro Kurosaki when he plays with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra on September 14. Kurosaki, born in Japan and raised in Vienna, has been described as the ‘best of Japan, Austria, Spain and France, all wrapped into one impressive and explosive package.’ So in demand is the talented violinist that Brandenburg Orchestra Artistic Director Paul Dyer reports it took 15 years to finally book him to tour Australia. This tour, the Orchestra presents Vivaldi Violin Velocity, featuring compositions by Vivaldi and Handel, as well as the Australian premiere of pieces by Zavateri and Pisendel.
Zoe Carter caught up with Kurosaki as he was rushing to throw a party for the entire Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, to discover not only is he a virtusousi, he has a wicked sense of humour, and plenty to say about the men behind the music….
ZC: Tell me about this concert?
HK: This concert is about high Baroque, music. It’s very Italian, very extravagant, dramatic, colourful music. This is mostly Vivaldi, and we have other composers in the program too, like Handel and Pisendel.
Vivaldi developed a certain technique on the violin to play very fast notes. But it’s not only about fast notes, it’s also beautiful music. Of course everybody knows Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ for example, and he had a real sense for the sound, how to make music sound and to paint, he really paints with the sound of the instrument. So you can visualise, or we hope we play in a way that the audience can really visualise the music. You know the music was never something abstract, it always meant, every note, every melody, every configuration meant something. Sometimes it was, sometimes in those notes we are playing you can hear hunting horses, for example, and you can just see hunters, riding on horses, you can hear the rhythm, in the music. It’s really a picturesque, descriptive music
The connection between Vivaldi and Pisendel is that they were friends. They were very close friends, and Pisendel considers himself as a pupil of Vivaldi, although that is a point we can’t prove. But we do have correspondence between them, and we have pieces by Vivaldi dedicated to Pisendel, and vice versa. So I think they were really, very good friends.
ZC: I’ve heard you’ve got a bit of a mean gaydar going when it comes to composers…
HK: [laughs] Yes. I’ve spoken to other gay musician colleagues and I think that everyone says yes, it’s true, we can feel if a composer was gay or not. I don’t know why,,. but there’s a certain sensibility. For example, it’s quite certain that Handel was gay. It’s quite rare, in the Baroque time, that such a famous man was never married. And it’s also a famous story that he always travelled with his cook. A specialist cook, who went everywhere with Handel. It could also be because Handel loved to eat, you know, he was enormous! [laughs]
Also Handel had a very special relationship to women. All his big operas have heroines, the women are very strong in Handel’s operas. But we also know that he didn’t get along well with the singers. There’s a famous story, that he got so cross with a prima donna, that he threw her out of a window. She was such a diva, and he couldn’t stand her, but that’s from the first floor, a very low floor, I think, she didn’t hurt herself…
We don’t know much about Pisendel, as a private man. Me, I have the feeling he was gay. But it’s something, I can’t say why. But maybe, as an audience, when you listen to the piece I will play, there is a certain sensibility, a certain feeling, which is very refined. And, I could imagine that you can also feel that. Pisendel was the first violinist, the leader of the Dresden Court Orchestra. And at that time, when he was leading the orchestra, the orchestra became the best orchestra in all of Europe. And in the principality of Dresden, under the reign of the King, at that time, was very famous for partying . .. there were festivities through the whole year, it was one party after another.
ZC: I hear you throw a mean party yourself – is this an important part of creating good music?
HK: Oh yes! Definitely. I think music making itself, should be a party. I feel that. There’s another funny thing… we know from the order list of musicians at the time, apart from having a certain amount of strings, a certain amount of shoes, and clothes, concert clothes, and there’s a big list, a big wine list. And it’s been calculated that with the amount of musicians, the number of days they rehearsed and the amount of wine they ordered, if they if they drank all that wine, they must have been drunk all the time. But I think at that time, people were too afraid to drink water.
ZC: So one final thing, before I let you go to your party – what’s your favourite thing to play?
HK: That’s a very difficult question! There are many, many favourites. I think every composer, I love certain things in every composer. I have some favourites, yes, for example Handel, I love Handel, I love Mozart. There’s something strange about Mozart, and I think there is a certain human thing in his way of seeing life, you can hear that in his music. He was definitely not gay, but hypersensitive to everything in life. And this is something that is wonderful. There are hardly any composers who can express any kind of human feelings in music. Not only big feelings and big dramas, but, like ‘oh, I feel a little bit funny’ and Mozart could do that. And I think that’s just fabulous, because he understood about being human. And Handel also has a big understanding about human beings. He of course was an opera queen, I have to say so. Everything he wrote, chamber music, everything, with big divas, or small divas. ..’
Hiro Kurosaki will be playing with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra at the Perth Concert Hall on September 14. Tix at BOCS, more info www.brandenburg.com.au.
